


When Words Fail

by marvelouskatie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bit of Fluff, Deaf Clint Barton, Disabled Character, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, bit of angst, possible slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8712805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelouskatie/pseuds/marvelouskatie
Summary: Bucky has always believed he doesn't have a soulmate. Darcy has always known the name of hers. When the two of them meet, it could be the best thing that ever happened to either of them, or it could be the worst.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a while, in between other writing projects, and finally decided to share. It will be two parts, just because it started getting a little long. Hope you all enjoy it because it's been a nice means of entertaining myself when I couldn't get this plot bunny out of my head. 
> 
> oh and two things:  
> 1) I've tweaked canon details, so don't hold too hard to the events of ALL the movies  
> 2) I apologize if I inadvertently offend anyone who is mute or deaf or uses ASL as a means to communicate. Please feel free to amend my ignorance of anything so I can make changes to the story if necessary. Thanks!
> 
> This story was partially inspired by a wonderful fic I read for the Merthur/Merlin fandom called "Fundamentall Flawed" by QueenofCamelot. I've used the plotty bit that resembles her fic with her permission :)

_Anima Dicere_. That’s what science called them. Other people, regular folks like Bucky’s ma, called them Soulmarks or Soulwords. They always appeared on a kid’s right arm the moment they uttered their first words. A toddler reaches up to his father and says “dada” and a little golden tattoo appears on their wrist, shining like a miracle, the iridescent ink a tad difficult to read unless someone is standing real close. 

The Soulmark isn’t composed of the first words spoken by the kid, however. Magically inked across their skin are the first words they will ever hear from their soulmate in their soulmate’s own handwriting; a small preview of their one true partner, the person that the universe had design specifically for them, even before they were born, if legends were to be believed.

When James Buchanan Barnes—known to his friends as Bucky--was born, science was nowhere near what it would grow to be in the 21st century. People readily accepted Soulmarks as a real life fairytale, one true love and all that. No questions. Girls swooned at the possibility of the words glittering across their arms and guys felt like heroes. It was a little cheesy, but a lot of people thought that way until they met “the one,” then all sense of reason went out the window.

Not much had changed on that. Science did its thing, running test after test, trying to prove the practicality behind the Anima Dicere. Was it an evolutionary thing? Did they tie into Darwinism and survival? Was it cosmic law? No concrete correlation could be found in any conclusion or in any test. Considering that same-sex soulmarks existed in spades, it was hard to argue propagation of the species and fate was difficult dame, unwilling to be caught or measured. She seemed to change the rules all the time. Bucky would learn that one-day. The hard way.

 _Anima Dicere_ , Soulmarks, evolution, fairytales, call it whatever, all Bucky knew was he didn’t have one. He was without words.

It wasn’t unheard of, but it was cause for alarm. Old wives tales said that those without marks were sure to meet early deaths or in darker stories it meant that a person didn’t have a soul. Bucky was bothered by that particular possibility when he was young. Maybe scared out of his mind was a better word. Being the Catholic boy he was, he cried at the thought of burning in Hell because he didn’t have a soul to save.

Bless his saint of a mother; it couldn’t have been easy trying to comfort a child who was deemed unlovable by the universe. But his ma rallied and told him that not having a soulmate didn’t mean he didn’t have a soul; it just meant he was free to spread his love as far and wide as he dared. Little Bucky liked that idea. He liked the idea of being free, of not being bound by fate, but open to the opportunity of possibilities. Older Bucky liked the idea even more.

It didn’t surprise anyone, least of all Bucky’s ma, that once Bucky grew into a young man, with charm, a lazy smile, and a quick wit, that he became quite the ladies man.  
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“It’s cheating,” Bucky insisted tipping his whiskey in the direction of Dum Dum’s right wrist. 

The bar was smoky, the booze was good, and Bucky was really, really happy to be alive.

It had been touch and go for a while, laid up on Hydra’s operating table, playing guinea pig for whatever it was they were trying to test. Then Steve appeared. Bucky thought he’d been dreaming, his brain conjuring up some vision of his best friend to help him survive the torture. But Steve had been real and he saved him from capture.

“It’s not cheating,” Dum Dum insisted around the cigar parked between his teeth, whiskers twitching under the lamplight glowing above their table. 

Morita smirked at his right, attention on the deck of cards fluttering in his hand as he shuffled.

“It’s a name,” Bucky contended. “Your Soulwords are a name. You could track her down any time you want.”

“But I won’t.” Dum Dum replied, gleam in his eye. “More fun if I just sit back and let life take its course.”

Bucky watched the way Dum Dum sucked on the cigar, a little of the mirth leaving his expression and a little bit of anxiousness creeping in. Soulmarks were always a big topic for soldiers. Some found hope with theirs and others…well…

The truth of it was if Dum Dum hadn’t met his soulmate yet, it upped his chances for surviving the war. Most guys in the service with Soulmarks figured if they hadn’t met their matches yet, that meant they couldn’t die. Fate had already ordained that they would hear the words; they couldn’t die a moment before their soulmates spoke to them.

Of course, there wasn’t anything to back up the superstition and there were always stories told during boot camp and through marches across the European countryside that questioned the idea that not meeting your soulmate could save your life. A private who knew a guy who knew a guy who hadn’t met his soulmate, but was blown out of the trenches during a firefight anyway.

Bucky unconsciously glanced at his blank wrist, knowing that his chances were 50/50 either way. There were definitely a few times, lying on the table, suffering at the hands of the German soldiers, that Bucky would have appreciated having at least the tease of hope of having a soulmate out there waiting for him.

A shiver crept up his spine, the fragility of his life raising the hairs on his neck, even if he was safe and whole for the moment. He knocked back his whiskey, ignoring the way it had suddenly become a little bit harder to breathe, and stood up to go the bar. Steve was already sitting at one of the stools, away from the rest of them. Bucky shook his head. Damn self-imposed loner, a slave to country and duty. Steve had a mark and his match was standing across the bar, in a red dress, waiting for the punk to ask her to dance.

“You ever gonna go talk to her?” Bucky goaded, nodding at the bartender for another drink.

“We talked,” Steve said, tracing the edge of his own glass with his finger. “Now’s…not a good time.”

“Stevie,” Bucky urged, “look around. The world is ending. No better time than now.”

He couldn’t help getting irritated with his best friend. Steve didn’t know how good he had it, having a soulmate. Bucky loved his life, he lived by the advice his mother had given him as a young boy, but there were times when he wished he had someone meant for him. He’d been thinking it more and more the past couple of days and he wanted to hit Steve over the head for how dumb he was acting.

Steve didn’t respond or move; instead he took another pull from his glass and kept his eyes on the space in front of him. Bucky sighed.

“Well if you aren’t going to dance with her, maybe I’ll go ask. Always did like brunettes the best.”

Bucky swung his body around, to head in Peggy Carter’s direction, but was stopped by Steve’s firm grip on his shoulder. The hold wasn’t menacing, but it was a firm warning. Bucky bit back a smirk and looked up at his best pal with challenging eyes. The couple inches Steve had on him now was still something to get used to.

“Alright, I get it. I’ll go ask her to dance. Jerk.”

Bucky couldn’t help but laugh at how pained Steve sounded. “Stevie, I’m not asking you to go kiss Hitler. I’m telling you to go dance with your soulmate.”  
Steve smiled and nodded, knowing Bucky was right. His expression fell for a moment and he asked. “It really never bothers you? Not being marked.”  
Bucky shrugged, as he usually did, playing it off as cavalier. He wanted to ignore his fears, ignore the voice in the back of his head that had been whispering to him ever since he signed up for the army. The one that had been shouting at him the moment he was captured and thrown into an enemy prison. A voice that had him convinced there was something to those old wives tales about young death after all.

“Go dance with your girl,” he said instead, giving Steve a clap on the shoulder and a firm nod in Peggy’s direction.  
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It wasn’t long after that night at the bar, that Bucky figured out why he never got a Soulmark. That voice that had been shouting at him had been right.

Minutes stretched into days when he fell from the train and he had the time to think about a great many things. The old wives tales were true, his mother had been wrong, and he wasn’t meant to have a soulmate because he was meant to die young and tragic.

The wind rushing past him was cold and cut through his cheeks as he tumbled down and down and down, further from the train, further from Steve, further from life.

His last hope was simply that the other superstitions he’d heard growing up weren’t true. He desperately hoped that even if he didn’t have a soulmate, he would still have a soul, and that he’d have a chance to find peace with whatever waited for him on the other side.  
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Bucky didn’t die that day.

However the soul that he questioned, if he’d had one before, he knew he didn’t anymore.

Hydra had taken great care to strip away whatever soul he might have possessed, until he was nothing more than a machine. Ready to kill. Ready to comply.  
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Darcy had friends that were born with some pretty lame Soulwords. Things like “Nice to meet you” or “How are you today” or “Hello.” Stuff people heard hundreds of times in their every day lives. It certainly made things harder and sometimes a little more awkward, when it came to finding one’s soulmate.

Darcy remembered her high school bud, Sara, grabbing anyone who said “hello” to her for the first time to write the word on whatever piece of scrap paper she could find. She’d check the writing against the mark on her wrist, to see if it matched. Sara wasn’t shy; she couldn’t afford to be if she wanted to find her soulmate. Sometimes Soulwords created a special type of relentlessness in a person that was both amusing and terrifying.

Darcy was lucky, though. She had a name; a name that glittered across her wrist, half cursive, half print, usually hidden away by a bracelet or leather band. Some people would show off their words, proud and unashamed. The Soulwords hashtag on Instagram was sometimes endearing but mostly obnoxious. Darcy wanted to keep her words secret and safe. A name was something rare and special. Only the closest of friends and family knew what her words were.

When her grandpa came to visit for her fifth birthday and she showed him her Soulwords and he had bellowed out a laugh.

Little Darcy cocked her head. “What’s so funny, Dum Dum?”

Dum Dum had been his nickname during the war and he preferred that to being called grandpa. Being called grandpa made him feel old, which he swore he wasn’t, even though he was pushing 75 at the time.

Grandpa Dum Dum hoisted her onto his lap. “I had a name, too. Your grandma’s name,” he told her, fond twinkle in his eye, brilliant grin under his impressive gray whiskers, “I once knew a fella who always said names were cheating.”

Darcy wrinkled her nose at that and Dum Dum laughed again, tweaking her little nose.

That was the day her grandpa sat with her on his lap, with a glass of iced tea, and told her all about his time with the Hollowing Commandos.  
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The day of Dum Dum’s funeral was the day Darcy decided her future.

It was mere days before she was headed off to Culver to begin her freshman year. She’d been so close to majoring in history. Her childhood obsession with World War II had spiraled out into a seriously crazy love of history. But then she realized political science was the better option. She didn’t need to major in history, hell she could probably teach the damn classes.

The day of the funeral was the same day she met Peggy Carter. Darcy knew a funeral wasn’t the best place for her to be fangirling, but she secretly was on the inside, and she knew that if Dum Dum had still been around he would have understood. Because of her grandpa’s stories, Peggy Carter had been one of her heroes growing up.

Dum Dum had been the last of the living Commandos and the renowned agent had come to pay her respects and say goodbye.

History didn’t know about the love affair between Peggy Carter and Captain America. Dum Dum told Darcy that story himself. It was something to be kept secret and safe, like her Soulwords. Darcy understood secrets, which was probably why she pushed down the black velvet band she wore on her wrist that day and showed Agent Carter her Soulwords.

Agent Carter, “please dear, call me Peggy,” gave her a watery smile, touching the mark on her wrist. Her fingers were wrinkled, soft as silk, and gentle.

“It’s nice,” the old woman told her. “That someone would name their boy after him. It’s a nice name. He was a good man, even if he was a bit of a cad.” Her smile was fond, but sad.

Darcy spent most of the afternoon talking with Peggy and decided what she wanted to do with her life. She had her mother’s and her grandpa’s stubbornness, her loud voice, and a brash intelligence. She would go into politics. As a political science major, she could do more good in the world and make a real difference, just as her historical heroes had.  
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Admittedly, interning for Jane Foster was a bit of a derailment. But she didn’t have any other choice. Broadening her horizons couldn’t hurt, she told herself. Even though it was a lame justification. The real story was that she’d procrastinated applying for internships and now she was screwed. She knew nothing about science or physics. Theoretical thinking never did much for her. Darcy liked facts and statistics and figures that were solid and real.

The internship, however, turned out to be way more than Darcy had bargained for. Maybe in a good way? The jury was still out.

The day S.H.I.E.L.D. steam rolled into their desert stationed lab made Darcy happy that the Soulwords portion of the Right to Privacy Act hadn’t been repealed with the Patriot Act. She had a sneaking suspicion that Jane’s Soulwords would have raised a few flags, considering that it was in an alien language and said alien had recently dropped out of the sky, bellowing something about a hammer.

Darcy wasn’t supposed to know about S.H.I.E.L.D. but again, Dum Dum had told her a lot. She had a feeling that if these jack booted government agents knew that Jane was the alien’s soulmate, they’d be carting her off with the rest of the evidence to poke and prod her in ways that didn’t merit thinking.

So that was why Darcy held back her shouting, angry boss as S.H.I.E.L.D. drove away with all of their equipment and research. And, much to Darcy’s lament, her iPod.  
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How did this happen? Darcy thought, stirring a spoon around her morning cup of tea. She’d been out of the hospital for two days. London was still cleaning up the mess from the gigantic, intergalactic battle. Team Science was back at Jane’s mother’s house, which had survived the onslaught with only a few picture frames knocked from the walls. 

Ian was on Darcy’s right, glancing hopefully at her every few seconds. But their passionate kiss in the heat of battle was the furthest thing from her mind.

Jane was on her left, looking miserable and anxious. Darcy wanted to turn to her, offer some words of reassurance, but she couldn’t. She physically couldn’t. She touched the bandage at her head, a dull throbbing pain behind it reminding her of all she’d lost.

Erik was back with them and that was something. He seemed a little less banana balls than he had been since New York.

She wanted to take care of her friends, but Darcy couldn’t tear herself away from her own thoughts.

How did this all happen? How did she get here?

She mentally retraced her steps over the past two years.

Interning for Jane and meeting an alien prince, pushing off college to stick by her friend and discover new worlds, being carted off to a super secret science hide out when Loki and the Chitauri invaded, putting off college more, following Jane to London, Thor’s return, Aether and Dark Elves and another battle for Earth that she was at the center of this time.

Breaking Erik out of a mental hospital.

Ian’s kiss.

Teleportation. 

Hitting her head. 

Blacking out.  

Waking up in the hospital and silence.  

Not a silent world. The world was still noisy as ever. It wouldn’t shut up about the second alien invasion and Thor and what it all meant. The collective fear of the people coalesced into pockets of chaos, but Darcy’s fear came to a pinpoint of her own world the moment she woke up. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t talk. She scratched at her throat and silently yelled for someone to help her.

A nurse appeared, trying to calm her, and then a doctor who explained everything that had happened to her and nothing.

Something about her Amygdala and Broca’s area of the brain. She couldn’t quite follow, she wasn’t good at science. Jane had gripped her hand tight and nodded along and asked the right questions. Darcy’s brain, the doctor explained, was fine except for the fact that it could no longer transmit her thoughts and words into actual sounds, rendering her effectively mute.

She could still sigh, groan, scream, cough, or make any other trivial noise, but she couldn’t speak.

How the fuck did she get here?  
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Bucky wasn’t sure he was ready for all of it. Interacting with other humans didn’t come as easily to him as it did long, long ago. Normal human interaction didn’t involve assessing every person that crossed his path and categorizing them as handler, target, or collateral. It was a hard habit to break. Steve finally brought him home, or to the place Steve called home, the new Avengers facility in upstate New York.

It was a hidden base, where he was taking the time to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers after the losses they’d suffered over the past year and a half. For being a small operation, it was a pretty large facility. Steve explained it was both a home base and a training and R&D facility. The three levels visible above ground were just the tip of the iceberg.

Steve said they could use Bucky there, even if he wasn’t keen on being in the front lines. Bucky had decided two things about his life a few months back when he finally decided to let Steve catch up with him.

One, he would rather die than ever be used as a weapon again.

Two, he would atone for his sins as best he could, and help Steve and his team fight Hydra.

They were currently in the middle of the grand tour of the facility. Steve took him down in an elevator to the science labs.

“I know you’ll appreciate it,” he said with a nudge. “You were always a science nerd.”

The grin on Steve’s face, the expectation in his eyes, told Bucky that Steve was expecting some sort of banter. Bucky grasped for a response, but too many seconds passed and the moment dropped.

Steve showed him around the different clusters of labs, explaining each one to the best of his limited science knowledge. There was the tech R&D team that has been personally recruited and vetted by Tony Stark, the bankroll of the operation. Then they saw the biology team, made up of biochemists, radiologists, and a few other types of scientists, overseen via remote communication by Dr. Bruce Banner.

Lastly, Steve took Bucky to the large lab at the very corner of the facility. Unlike most of the high tech equipment that Bucky observed throughout the rest of the facility, most of the stuff looks either ancient or homemade. That included what was unpacked. Most of the area and tables were covered in brown boxes and scattered, crumpled, newspapers. Whoever was using this lab was still moving in.

His attention turned to a rustling in the middle of it all. There, Bucky finally noticed two petite brunettes, one complaining about something to the other, her face pinched and a flannel shirt tied around her tiny hips. Bucky picked up on the grievance quickly, realizing that while moving in, her equipment wasn’t unloaded properly.

“Everything okay, Foster?” Steve asked, stepping gingerly around the bits and pieces of metal and plastic lying around the floor. Bucky followed his path, legging it over a giant cylinder that he guessed might belong to a telescope.

“You’d think vetted personnel would be competent enough to move a few boxes around correctly, but no,” the woman huffed. “Now I have to go through everything to make sure it isn’t broken. And, we’ll need to move the telescopes to the roof.”

Bucky caught the other girl, younger than the one Steve called “Foster,” rolling her eyes behind a pair of rectangle framed glasses. The expression was made with a smile, as she tossed some paper into what seemed to serve as a designated trash pile.

Unlike the other scientists, Steve seemed more familiar with this woman. He took the time to make introductions and Bucky recalled the name Jane Foster. She was an astrophysicist first, important in the study of recently discovered alien realms, and she was also girlfriend to Thor.

“And this is Darcy Lewis,” Steve said, gesturing to the other girl. She stepped forward and grinned. “Ladies, this is Bucky—um, actually? Is Bucky okay?”

Bucky winced at Steve’s deference. He both appreciated and hated it. He’d been touchy about the idea of his name, still getting used to having one again. In the beginning he’d preferred James to most of the people he interacted with. Just hearing “Bucky” sent him spiraling down roads he had no intention of going. Time helped heal some of those wounds, no longer so easily ripped open by the nickname.

Bucky looked at Darcy and replied, “Bucky or James. Either is fine.”

Darcy’s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. It was clear it wasn’t a reaction she meant to have because it lasted a second and was quickly blinked away as Darcy tried and failed to go for something more neutral. Too late. Bucky was already cringing, folding in on himself and the idea of human interaction. Her reaction to him was exactly what he’d been nervous about. People in the facility knowing who he was and being afraid of him, or worse validating all the hate his therapist and Steve tried to encourage him to not feel toward himself.

Not that he didn’t find anyone’s fear or blame toward him unwarranted, but it made him feel like a vicious animal, the way his handlers had treated him for decades.

“Nice to meet you,” Foster said, unaware of the awkward moment and clearly wanting to turn her full attention back to her equipment inspection.

Darcy continued to covertly gawk at him. Well, not so covertly. Bucky still noticed, wishing like hell she would stop.

Steve must have sensed Bucky’s uneasiness and excused them to go about the rest of the tour.  
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Over the next few days, Bucky settled in and developed a routine. He’d run in the mornings with Steve through the forests surrounding the facility. They’d have breakfast and Steve would check in with the various teams to make sure everyone was settling in all right.

Sam arrived and the three of them began their plans for training. The next two weeks would be spent breaking the facility’s personnel into groups for some training exercises. Even low-level administrators would be a part of the program. They wanted to instill everyone who worked with and around the Avengers with some knowledge of safety and self-defense.

Both Sam and Steve thought it would be a great program for Bucky help out with. Bucky had his doubts as a teacher, but the two of them reassured him that he could hang back and supervise instead of getting hands on with the trainees.

Thankfully, he didn’t run into Darcy within those few days. He couldn’t shake her reaction to him from his brain. It didn’t make any sense to him why her reaction in particular made such a difference to him. She wasn’t anyone special or important; he didn’t know her from Eve. He’d deigned to ask Steve what it was that she even did and Steve explained she was in charge of managing the various labs and scientists who worked for them. He went on to add that she was trustworthy and smart and loyal and that was what their team needed at the moment.

Not to mention she was a very good friend of Thor’s and under his protection.

Bucky sniffed at that but said no more.  
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Darcy wasn’t looking forward to the whole training thing. On the bright side—or shallow side—she thought maybe it would force her into loosing ten pounds and dropping a dress size. Who was she kidding really, though? She’d immediately put it all back on as soon as the program ended, at her first chance to hunker down in the common room couch with a large Hawaiian pizza.

There wasn’t any choice in participation. First thing on Monday, she grabbed leggings, a large tie-dyed t-shirt, and hoisted her hair into a ponytail to meet the rest of the science gang in the training facility.

It was her responsibility as the head honcho of what she called Team Science, to attend the full retinue of training and encourage the others to do so as well; week one was deemed mandatory, week two would be optional. Darcy would be participating in both and she would have to do so with minimal grumbles and a smile on her face.

Being in an exercise group with a bunch of science nerds thankfully meant that she wasn’t the most inadequate of the bunch when it came to personal fitness. They’d been divvied up into groups according to their labs so that they could learn to work as a team as well as mingle with some of the Avengers. Wanda was assigned to her group, for which Darcy was thankful. She liked Wanda, even if the Russian girl was a little weird. Even though she had the whole super power telekinesis thing going on, Darcy soon recognized her for the teenage girl she was and took her under her wing.

It also helped that Wanda could sometimes read her mind. Even though the invasion of personal thoughts was a grievous sin, Darcy didn’t mind it sometimes. It made conversation easier.

For the most part, Darcy used her phone to communicate with others, typing out texts for her side of any conversations. Clint had the whole ASL thing down, due to his hearing issues, and Jane was making an effort to learn, but it was slow going. Even Darcy wasn’t a pro at the language yet. So she kept her phone strapped to her hip at all times just in case.

Wanda hovered next to her, throwing her a secret smirk, picking up on her energy. Darcy grinned back. Somehow, even in loose workout clothes, Wanda managed to look like an ultra-hip 90s grunge girl, various rings adorning her fingers and bracelets wrapped around her arms.

Darcy absently snapped at the sweatband on her wrist, her chosen accessory that day for concealing her Soulwords, as more scientists and agents shuffled into the gym. Her mind wandered back to a few days before. Considering she now knew who her soulmate was, hiding the mark became more necessary than ever.

Darcy never dreamed in a million years that the words “Bucky or James, either is fine” adorning her wrist actually referred to the James Buchanan Barnes, formally of the Howling Commandos, infamously known in the current century as the Winter Soldier. Dum Dum, Peggy Carter, her mother…they all assumed that maybe it was a distant relative or someone he’d known that had named their kid after the war hero. No one had ever imagined that he’d survived his fall during the war.

It shocked her to find her soulmate in not only Captain America’s best friend, but also one of history most feared assassins. She’d asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. to pull up all known information on The Winter Solider, both from legend and from the S.H.I.E.L.D. data leak.

After very little sleep and hours spent combing through files and articles and whole lot of terrible shit, she’d thought about it and she decided that Bucky probably didn’t need the complication of a soulmate in his life at the moment. Especially one with her current disabilities. He had his baggage to deal with; he didn't need hers as well.

It wasn’t as if Darcy was still grieving for all her dead dreams of say…ever becoming the next American Idol--not that she could ever sing to begin with--but the option was always there before the battle against the Dark Elves. She'd spoken with a therapist at her doctor’s recommendation to help deal, and becoming buds with Barton had helped, but she still had periods of grief. She still had moments when she needed to curl into the fetal position and ball her eyes out and pretend that no one in the nine realms had it harder than her, even if that wasn't actually true. 

All she'd have to do is avoid Bucky and saying his words for the time being. That would be easy enough. She'd only seen him the one time since they'd been introduced the other day and upon first impression she was guessing he wasn't much of a social butterfly anyways. Avoiding him would be no problem.  
  
Or so Darcy thought.  
  
Her attention was pulled back to the present as their trainer, Sam Wilson, walked into the gym with her soulmate, Bucky Barnes striding in behind him.  
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Training began with running laps around the facility. Darcy loathed running, but Sam insisted that the best defense for their group was the ability to run away to safety.  
  
No one was great at jogging, but Darcy’s short stature left her at even more of a disadvantage. She was soon at the back of the pack, huffing and puffing her way through a light jog. It was the best she could manage considering that she'd had an extra large latte for breakfast and had no plans for tasting it a second time, backwards. It was her plan to do what she'd done in every gym class she'd had since the third grade. Keep a low profile, stay in the back, and avoid detection as to maintain exertion of as little effort as possible.  
  
Another great plan, that would have been perfect, had a super soldier sized wrench in the form of Bucky Barnes not been thrown directly into it.  
  
Darcy was jogging along, minding her own business, contemplating if it would be cool to bring along her headphones and listen to music during her next training session, when Bucky materialized beside her.  
  
"Keep up," he ordered, voice gruff, and pinched expression leaving little room for argument.  
  
He dressed in all black. Even the laces on his trainers were black. The long sleeve tee he wore hugged his arms and concealed the cybernetic arm to the wrist. A black glove hid his hand and fingers, Darcy noticed. His long hair was covered and pulled away from his face by a backwards ball cap.  
  
Darcy glared at him, but picked up the pace, hoping he'd scram if she gave him his way. No dice. Bucky kept a neat pace with her, staying at her elbow and forcing her to go at the quicker speed for the rest of her run. He might have been her soulmate, but she swore she would vomit her latte up directly on his shoes if it came to it. It would be his fault anyway.  
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It continued like that for days. Training always began with laps. Bucky would run up beside her, nag her about going faster, and stay with her throughout the run. It took a few days for Darcy to realize that once she caught up with the group, he'd leave her that much quicker. Faster running meant she was way more winded and sweaty at the end of the run, but it also meant he wasn't constantly beside her.  
  
Darcy had no guesses as to why the grumpy faced man chose to zero in on her in such a way. There were plenty of other trainees that were lacking in athleticism the same as her. There was no way he knew of their soulmate status. Darcy kept her words sufficiently hidden from view and they weren't in any of her files, just incase anyone was inclined to snoop. Bucky didn’t really seem to like her at all. He mostly glared when his attention was directed on her or snapped orders or corrections at her when she was doing something wrong. 

During combat lessons--in which Darcy was paired with Wanda--Darcy would catch his eye and see a look of disappointment or a judgmental shake of his head. Honestly, he was starting to seem like a little bit of a jerk. The decades of trauma he faced maybe gave him a pass to be in a bad mood every now and again, but they were surrounded by people with bad histories. Darcy had little patience for anyone who used his or her emotional baggage as an excuse to be an asshole.  
  
"He watches you again," Wanda murmured to her as they practiced dodging attacks. Sam had showed them a few maneuvers to dodge and feint so they could avoid getting hit or caught and make a mad dash to safety. Always with the running.  
  
Darcy attempted to discreetly glance over at Bucky, who was indeed keeping watch on her from the corner of his eye. Her momentary distraction allowed Wanda an advantage and the girl slipped an arm around her shoulders and locked her into one of the holds they'd been taught.  
  
Darcy grunted, shoving at Wanda’s elbow. Unable to escape, she tapped Wanda's arm to signal her surrendered. The girl let her go, tossing her long ponytail over her shoulder in victory. A peel of laughter came from Darcy.  
  
_Unfair_ , Darcy typed, once she pulled out her phone. _Distracting me is cheating_.  
  
Wanda chuckled. "The bad guys won't be giving you time to make eyes at your boyfriend before they attack."  
  
Darcy rolled her eyes. _He's not my boyfriend_ , she typed in response.  
  
"Are you sure?" Wanda countered, her eyes narrowing. Darcy knew that Wanda was picking up on her cagey vibes. Ever since meeting Bucky, Darcy had been less inclined to let Wanda into her head during conversations. Wanda was her friend, but Darcy couldn't take the chance. There was too much risk that she'd let something slip through.  
  
Darcy turned back to look at Bucky, jumping in surprise at finding him right behind her, instead of across the room. "It's not play time, ladies." His words were more or less a snarl.  
  
Again, with the confidence that said he didn't expect an argument, he moved away to focus attention on another set of partners.  
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Bucky expected her to drop out after the first week. She seemed frustratingly apathetic to the entire self-defense training program. Darcy was always last of the line while doing laps, she spent more time on her phone or laughing with Maximoff during combat sessions than practicing, and during safety drills she would hide in the most obvious of places, not even half attempting to make herself difficult to find.  
  
She didn't seem to take much seriously and it was clear she'd never seen or experienced anything bad enough to scare her into giving a damn about preparing for her own safety. Bucky had been like that once, a long time ago. He'd thought himself invincible. That kind of attitude hadn't done him any favors and wouldn't do Darcy any favors either. Sam told him to ease up but he didn't see the point in going easy on her, so he didn't.  
  
For some backwards reason, he ended up making this girl he didn't even like very much his own personal mission. Judging by the withering looks she tossed his way throughout every session, she didn’t care for him all that much either.  
  
The second week of training was similar to the first, but not mandatory, so a lot of the scientists and other non-combat active personnel dropped out. Some of them opted out because the second week covered some minor weapons training and the pacifists of the group had no interest in learning to handle guns. Because there were fewer trainees, it was more appropriate for Sam and him to give each of their students more attention.  
  
It was the second to last day of training, when the trainees were at the range practicing quick load and fire. The goal was to have them pick up a gun, load a mag as quickly as possible, aim as best they could, and shoot the target.  
  
Bucky surveyed the stations they’d set up at the range room. There was an expected level of nervousness from the group of scientists who'd never handled firearms before. Grips were unconfident, fingers fumbled across the hardware, Bucky thought it was a good thing that they'd decided to use blanks that first day.  
  
He finally let his eyes fall on the last station and the last pair. Darcy and Maximoff. He expected Darcy to be the nervous one when it came to the gun and Maximoff to also be standoffish. Steve mentioned the latter girl had telekinetic powers and relied heavily on those rather than weapons. He’d especially wanted Maximoff to put in some serious practice with weapons, considering she would be on active duty. Bucky agreed that it would be a good skill for her to learn, just in case the super powers had limits or malfunctions.  
  
Checking in on them from across the range, he scowled at the two girls, their attention nowhere near the assigned drill. Instead, Darcy had her phone out once again and was holding it up to Maximoff’s face, distracting her.  
  
His patience gone, he stomped in their direction, ignoring the careful way Sam called his name in protest. Bucky had had enough. If the girl wasn’t worried enough to take the safety and defense training seriously, she had no business being there, distracting others.  
  
Bucky ripped the phone from her grasp, the two girls shrieking and jumping back in surprise. He held the device in his cybernetic hand, tight enough that the screen let out a sharp, audible crack.  
  
Darcy gaped. All heads in the room turned toward the altercation.  
  
“Always on your damn phone,” the tirade was spilling from his lips before he even realized. “Not paying attention. Distracting others. Just because you don’t want to be here, Lewis, doesn’t mean that others don’t see the value in the training. Do you want to be the one who is responsible for your friend getting hurt because she was too busy chatting with you to learn how to fire a gun? Maybe if you took the time to look around you, you’d see this isn’t summer camp. This is real life and it can get real fucked up real fast if you aren’t smart enough or prepared enough to take care of yourself.” He squeezed the phone again and let it crunch once more for good measure. “Now, put down the damn phone, pick up the damn gun, or get out of my training course.”  
  
Bucky waited for whatever verbal barb she was sure to throw at him. It was clear her pride had just taken a hit and she wasn’t going to back down. Darcy’s brows pulled into a sharp V, her chin hardening in fury and her face red with embarrassment at being told off.  
  
Instead of opening her mouth, her hands began to move, in a series of short, sharp signals that left him confused.  
  
“Yes, Darcy,” Maximoff sneered, turning her eyes onto Bucky. “What the hell is your problem?”  
  
Bucky stood there, finally recognizing what he’d stupidly missed. The hand signals from Darcy had been sign language. Maximoff was translating what Darcy had said to him through signs. An uncomfortable guilt began to curl in his stomach as his memory flicked back through his brief acquaintance with the young lab assistant.  
  
When they’d met certainly she’d said her own name, right? Wait, no, that wasn’t right. Steve had introduced her. Darcy had simply gawked at him, but said nothing. During their runs, she’d grunted and groaned, but never made a verbal complaint. Maximoff always posed questions from the pair during specific training exercises. The girl had never spoken in front of him. Not once.  
  
Damn it.

A million things about Darcy suddenly became very clear to him and he had been unfortunately slow on the uptake.  
  
Bucky broke eye contact with her, like a damn coward, and glanced around to see the judgmental looks from the trainees and Sam. A few scowled, others flicked their eyes away, still intimidated by him even though he had undoubtedly just demonstrated how much of a bastard he could be. Sam had moved closer, his arms crossed, his head shaking back and forth.  
  
His eyes crept back to Darcy's face, anger boiling over and saturating her expression, face red and eyes hard as stone. He was pretty sure that if she any skill at using the gun on the table behind her, she would have used it on him right at that moment.  
  
Before he could even attempt any sort of apology, Darcy stormed away, shoving the door to the range open with a loud bang as it smack the wall outside. Maximoff muttered a few choice curses at him in Russian and ran off after her friend.  
  
Bucky didn’t see either woman for the rest of the day.  
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Darcy didn't show up for the last day of training, which both annoyed and relieved Bucky. Annoyed, because it was an important day and she shouldn't miss it, but relieved because he still had no idea what the hell he was going to say to her. I didn't know, seemed like such an inefficient excuse even though in all fairness he didn't know.  
  
Maximoff was there though, glaring daggers at him on behalf of her friend.  
  
“You’re lucky,” Sam quipped, “that she’s not making you think you have ants in your eyeballs or something like that. I know you haven’t seen the movie Carrie, so I’ll give you some advice. Don’t mess with the telekinetic, or her friend.”  
  
“Shut up,” Bucky growled, even though he knew Sam was right. He deserved whatever punishment Darcy or Maximoff could think up.  
  
That evening, in the name of team bonding, there was a party to celebrate the end of training. The science staff invited the Avengers that were on site to join them for the festivities and when Stark got wind of it, he somehow managed to have catering and booze delivered to their supposedly covert base.  
  
Someone put on music and dimmed the lights. Someone else pulled some sort of light machine out that flashed a rainbow of colors against the wall and ceilings. It wasn't a dressy affair, most everyone in casual shirts and jeans. Groups broke off to drink and talk, a few started dancing, even though scientists weren’t known to be particularly good dancers. A small card game was started in the corner and there was a big screen hosting some video game called Mario Kart.  
  
Bucky lingered in a corner, bottle of water in his hand, staring at Darcy across the room as she conversed with Clint. The archer twirled a drumstick in his hand between signing with her. Every now and then the brunette would throw her head back and laugh or smack Barton across the arm.  
  
"Barton taught her ASL. After her injury." Sam appeared beside him, beer in hand, also staring in Darcy and Clint's direction. "It helped her a lot. She wasn't in a good place right after, but she's a lot better now."  
  
Bucky swallowed. He knew about being in a bad place. Most days he was still there.  
  
"What happened?" His voice was quiet. Thick with remorse.  
  
"You read the brief about the battle in London? Dark Elves and all that?" Bucky nodded. "She was right in the middle of it. Took a hit and suffered a head injury. Everything else was good, but she lost her ability to speak. Unless medicine or technology figures it out, she won't ever talk again."  
  
A fresh wave of guilt washed over him. Just a few days ago, he'd been secretly complaining that she hadn't seen enough action to scare her straight. The truth was she'd seen far too much for a girl who could still smile as big as she was smiling at Barton.  
  
Without warning, as if she knew he was thinking about her, Darcy was looking back at him. Bucky's head snapped away, his eyes landing on the wall, the couch, the table, anywhere he could look to make it seem like he hadn't been staring. Christ, when did he become such a coward.  
  
"Smooth," Sam teased, dodging when Bucky tried to punch him.  
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Darcy was hanging out on the roof, cuddled in a blanket, looking at the stars. The party had died down, but she wasn't ready for sleep. She was still too keyed up over the confrontation with Barnes the day before and seeing him that evening. He'd been such an asshole to her on the one hand, but on the other she couldn't believe the first thing she'd ever said to him was "what the hell is your problem?"  
  
Those were her soulmate’s Soulwords? She felt terrible and justified all at once.  
  
Call her a chicken for skipping her last day of training. She didn't care. She wasn't ready to face or to have the big Soulmate talk with him, considering they hadn't started on the best terms.  
  
The universe, however, was working against her. No sooner had she felt relief at avoiding him for the night, Barnes appeared on the roof. She twisted in her chair when she heard the roof access door open and watched him freeze as he noticed her in her lawn chair.  
  
He lingered in the doorway, fight or flight warring within him, before Darcy shrugged and more or less gave him permission to invade her roof space with the wave of her hand.  
  
Bucky walked over, his boots scraping against the rough surface of the roof. "I was just doing a perimeter check before I call it a night."  
  
Darcy nodded and when he hovered awkwardly, she realized that they both didn't want to have that conversation, which meant it was probably as good a time as ever. She gestured to the empty lawn chair next to her.  
  
The yellow chair creaked, protesting Bucky's weight. It was much more used to Jane's petite frame. Silence vacillated between them for a long, long time; nothing but a gentle puff of a breeze or the echoing of crickets in the forest surrounding them to break the wordlessness. Unable to stand it any longer, Darcy groaned, the noise causing Bucky's attention to flick in her direction. She pulled out her phone—a new one she’d gotten express delivered thanks to Tony--and typed, thumbs hitting the screen furiously, before shoving it into his eye line.  
  
_For obvious reasons, you're going to have to be the one who starts._  
  
"Oh," Bucky cleared his throat, trying to navigate the increasing awkwardness, "right. Uhh...”  
  
Bucky was flailing. It was amazing, considering that he’d faced down assassins, rabid super soldiers, entire armies, Hydra…enemies a hundred times worse than a single blue eyed girl. But something about the hardness around her expression, the determined jut of her chin, her pointed frown, made his knees shake.  
  
For some reason, she seemed to take pity his lack of social graces, and grabbed the phone again to type something.  
  
_We might as well talk about it. Now that it’s out in the open._  
  
Bucky looked her in the eye. Apologies didn’t mean anything if someone couldn’t look the other person in the eye while giving one. His ma had always told him that. “I was a first class jerk. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did. I had no reason to treat you the way I did. Not that it’s an excuse, but my social skills aren’t up to par.”  
  
In the end, he wasn’t even sure why he was such a jerk to her. Maybe he had felt a little wounded when she’d reacted the way she had when they’d met. But all he’d done really was prove he was a bastard worth that sort of reaction.  
  
Darcy typed. _They didn’t teach etiquette in the Hydra assassin finishing school you went to?_  
  
Her mouth twitched. So did his, as he read her reply. She was edging toward forgiveness and he didn’t want to screw it up. Something about the way she teased him made him want to like her. Sam sometimes made Hydra jokes, but that’s because nothing pleased him more than giving Bucky a hard time. The Falcon was never going to forgive the Soldier for literally ripping off his wings. Steve, Natalia, the others all flinched at the mention of his time with Hydra.  
  
Darcy being comfortable enough to take a jab…it made an impression.  
  
“Nah, I think I was in cyro-freeze when they covered how to talk to pretty girls.”  
  
The automatic flirting surprised him and got another smile out of her. One she tried and failed to hide.  
  
_Smooth, Barnes. Flattery will get you everywhere._  
  
He chuckled, trying to ignore the rapid-fire beat of his heart. “Does that mean I’m forgiven for being the world’s biggest jackass?”  
  
Darcy nodded, a breeze blowing the waves around her face. She offered her right hand to seal their truce. Bucky took it. Her hand was small in his, fingers delicate, but handshake firm and confident. He noticed the bracelet around her wrist that must have been concealing her Soulmark. Whatever was written on her arm, she wanted it to be a secret.  
  
She furrowed her brows in a mock serious look, pursing her lips together, to affirm their new understanding. Bucky bit back his laughter. It was funny, he hadn’t felt that lighthearted since before he’d fallen from the train.  
  
Taking back her hand, Darcy grabbed the phone once more and typed.  
  
_I know you have a lot going on right now…but I was hoping we could at least be friends. If that’s all right with you?_  
  
He read the words twice. She was asking to be friends with him? It wasn’t at all what he expected from her. But between the story he’d heard about her from Sam, her teasing, and just the way he was feeling being with her at that moment, he thought that maybe he would like to be friends with Darcy Lewis.  
  
“Sure,” he replied, with briefest of smiles. “That sounds like a good plan to me.”  
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Bucky soon learned that Darcy’s friendship went from zero to sixty pretty quick. Where he was closed off, taciturn, and shy for obvious reasons, Darcy was inviting, vivacious and pretty damn talkative for a girl that was mute. She had her special ways of communicating.  
  
Now that training was finished, the two of them went their separate ways for the most part. Darcy was busy over seeing all things science down in the labs and Bucky spent his days getting ready for missions. He got to know her through rapid-fire text messaging, which suited him just fine. He wasn’t much of a talker. Conversations started out with Darcy asking him about his days, then regaling him on her own, before they spiraled out into other subjects spanning from favorite music, to things she read about on the internet, to questions about Captain America in the 40s.  
  
She never missed a chance to laugh or a joke at his expense. There wasn’t much she shied away from. Everything was fodder for a joke.  
  
“You know, you could at least pretend to be interested in my briefings,” Steve said to Bucky, calling his attention away from his phone’s screen.

Bucky looked up, noticing the conference room they were in was now empty, and Steve shooting him an arch look. The look that said if Bucky were anyone other than his best friend, he’d probably try to court marshal him for insubordination, or whatever the Avenger equivalent of that was. “Texting Darcy?”  
  
Bucky clicked off his phone and slid it into his pocket before he could finish reading about her first time ever getting drunk. That was the topic of the day. Firsts.  
  
Steve walked next to Bucky, the two soldiers heading to the elevator to swing by the common area kitchen for some food. It was almost lunchtime.  
  
“You know she’s Dum Dum’s granddaughter?” Steve asked. Bucky blinked, he hadn’t known that. Family hadn’t really come up for either of them yet.  
  
“She is?”  
  
“Yep, I saw it in her file. Small world, huh?"  
  
"Yeah," Bucky muttered. He hated coincidences. Coincidences were too close to fate and fate--if it existed--had dealt him blow after blow. When he’d been just a little boy, sobbing in his mother’s arms, he sometimes thought not having a Soulmark was the worst curse destiny bestowed upon him. Since falling from the train, he knew that fate was an even crueler bitch than that.  
  
The two of them exited the elevator, into the brightness of the common area, and Bucky eyes immediately found Darcy hovering by the fancy espresso machine that he still had no idea how to work. He'd been trained to use any type of gun, mode of transport, and any other weapon's tech, but he couldn't figure out how to make a damn cup of coffee with that extravagant, steel beast that Tony had installed.  
  
She greeted the two of them with a sunshine smile and a wave, yanking something from the machine. Coming closer, he saw it was the piece that contained the grounds. Darcy dumped the contents into the garbage disposal in the sink and flipped the switch, the appliance crunching to life.  
  
"Tony's going to kill you for that," Steve said, nodding to the grounds in the sink as he pulled a mug down from the cupboard.  
  
Darcy gave him a look that said if he wanted any of her coffee, he'd keep quiet, and not rat her out.  
  
She handed a mug to Bucky, because he wasn't presumptuous or as comfortable as Steve to steal some of the coffee she'd made. Even though the two of them were friends, they didn't actually spend a lot of time in the same room together. It was disarming to be around her, and yet so familiar somehow.  
  
Her laptop was open on the island counter, music playing from the speakers while she worked. In the corner of their screen, he spotted a window with the text conversation they'd just been having ten minutes ago. Before Steve had ended the briefing that Bucky hadn't been paying attention to.  
  
Darcy set down her coffee and typed, shifting the screen over to Bucky.  
  
_Why so glum, chum?_ He read and shook his head to indicate he was fine.  
  
Darcy didn't let go. _Why do you brood, dude?_  
  
That got a smile and a small chuckle out of him.  
  
"What's funny?" Steve asked, unaware of the silent conversation happening right next to him. Darcy tilted the screen in his direction so he could see what she'd said. He also laughed at her silly rhymes.  
  
"We're heading out on a mission tomorrow," he interjected, stirring half and half into his coffee. "Be gone about a week."  
  
It wasn't the reason Bucky was brooding. He didn't even realize he had been brooding, but Darcy seemed to take it as a valid response.  
  
_Bring me back something pretty?_ Darcy requested, her eyes going all big and round and puppy dog behind her rectangle frames.  
  
"It ain't a trip to Disneyland, doll." Bucky replied. Darcy poked him in the rib and stuck her tongue out. Steve laughed again at her antics.  
  
Of course, Darcy wanted to know the details. Bucky shared what he could telling her roundabout locations, skirting around their goals, and the projected time frame for when they'd be back. He thought maybe he could see a little worry crinkling the edges of her eyes, but he ignored it. It was probably just his eyes playing tricks on him.  
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Darcy was in the lab with Jane, watching data reports print from the gigantic printer, when Wanda came bursting in, out of breath. The new Avenger’s face was sweat streaked, her dark eye makeup smudged all around her eyes and cheekbones, hair a tangled mess.  
  
Darcy’s stomach dropped at the look of pure anxiety in the girl’s eyes.  
  
Up until then it had been a quiet morning. Darcy shuffled Jane off to bed at dawn, just in time to turn her attention to the incoming biologists ready to proverbially clock in and get started with their days. A gigantic yawn had bubbled from her throat and she was contemplating the comfort of her bed, when her telekinetic friend and busted through the lab door in a frenzy, grabbed her by the wrist, and told her she was needed.  
  
"You must stay quiet," Wanda instructed, rounding the hall. Darcy realized they were headed in the direction of the med bay. She also remembered that Wanda was supposed to be out on the same mission Bucky was on and that they weren't supposed to be back for two days. "Here."  
  
Wanda positioned her at the observation window of the OR and Darcy gasped at what she saw. There was blood and wire and Bucky strapped to a table with a terrified looking Steve hovering in the background. Helen Cho was on one side, with another nurse, examining the sources of blood. Tony was on the other, seeing to the arm that was hanging by hinges from Bucky's shoulder.  
  
Tony prodded at something and Bucky screamed, a guttural roar that had him lifting his body off the operating table. Steve was there in an instant, holding onto his shoulders, holding him still, encouraging him to breathe through the pain.  
  
Darcy didn’t even realize she’d slammed her hands against the glass, wanting to do something to help him. Anything to calm him, to make the pain stop.  
  
The sound made Tony look up in her direction. His eyes flashed concern for a moment before he said, "if you want to be in here kiddo, go get my tools. Now!"  
  
Darcy didn't need to be told twice. She pushed off the glass and ran, not knowing what exactly he needed, but trusting FRIDAY would tell her what she needed to know once she reached Tony's workshop.  
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Darcy was there through it all. Something steeled inside of her at seeing her soulmate in such pain. His cybernetic arm had been nearly ripped off. The pain was so unbearable Bucky had to be put out for Tony to work, going through each individual wire and soldering it all back together. Helen Cho supervised and Darcy was there with towels and tools and whatever else was needed. It took fourteen hours. She was dead on her feet by the time they were out of the woods, but she glared daggers at anyone who suggested she leave to get some rest.  
  
Most of the flesh wounds--bruises and cuts that had been cleaned by Helen--had already healed thanks to the serum running through his veins.  
  
After the long surgery, Bucky slept in the recovery room. Darcy remained with him, watching him sleep, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm under the sheet tucked around him. As far as hospital rooms went, the Avengers facility was pretty swank. Darcy was curled into a large, comfy waiting chair, her knees pulled to her chest, shoes discarded on the floor, watching every breath he took.  
  
Steve appeared in the doorway and Darcy lifted her head to him. They stared at each other a few moments, one of Darcy's eyebrows popping up, daring him to say something.  
  
“Don't give me that look. You should get some sleep." He took the extra, less comfortable chair, on the other side of Bucky's bed. Steve knew just how sleep deprived she was, but Darcy shook her head and stayed in her spot. The legs of Steve's chair scraped against the floor as he moved closer to the bed. The monitors behind Bucky’s head beeped quietly as Steve settled in. “He’s going to be okay, but I’m not sure how he’ll be when he wakes up.”  
  
Her phone was dead and Steve didn’t know ASL. Darcy cursed to herself and did the only thing she could do to communicate her feelings. Ignoring the heavy feel under her eyes, she fixed Captain America with a stern look and moved her mouth pointedly to form the words “I’m staying.”  
  
Steve looked like he wanted to argue, but was just as tired as she was, considering he'd been awake through the surgery and the mission they'd been on beforehand. He stretched out his legs and relaxed back into the chair to wait with Darcy for Bucky to wake up.  
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Another six hours passed before Bucky woke up. At first he was frightened. His body could tell right away that it had been out for much too long. Longer than the few hours of sleep he would get a night. His internal clock was off and that only happened when his handlers packed him back into cyro-sleep.  
  
It took a few panicked breaths for his body to register the low lamplight and soft, warm bed instead of what he’d been expecting. It wasn’t the cold ground he was used to when his thawing body dropped from the cyro-chamber, gasping for breath and consciousness, to face his new handler.  
  
His eyes traced down noticing the pink-socked feet, perched on the bed next to his hip. The feet were attached to a pair of curvy, legging covered legs that belonged to a sleeping Darcy Lewis.  
  
Bucky blinked, his vision clearing enough to see her sleep peaceful face.  
  
“Buck.” A voice on the other side of the bed called his attention and he turned his head to see Steve. Steve looked to be in good shape. He was glad beyond words. The details of what happened were a little fuzzy at the moment, but he remembered a hell of a fight.  
  
His attention turned back to Darcy, amazed and confused at seeing her at his bedside.  
  
“I’m pretty sure she’s been awake for about 48 hours,” Steve murmured, his voice soft and low. “She’s gonna be so mad. She just went out about ten minutes ago.”  
  
Bucky's instinct was to sit up, to reach for her, to carry her up to her bed even though he wasn’t quite sure where her quarters were located. It was at that moment that Bucky realized he was having a bit of trouble moving his cybernetic arm. He sat up in the bed and tried to roll his shoulder, finding the limb just a step above dead weight.  
  
“Tony said there’d be some calibration issues that you’d need to be awake for,” Steve explained, standing from his chair. “I can get him.”  
  
Bucky dragged a hand over his face. “What time is it?”  
  
“Around 1600, Tuesday the 21st. You’ve been out for almost a day.”  
  
“Christ,” Bucky said, watching Darcy shift in her chair. Steve left to get Tony and Bucky watched Darcy sleep while doing a mental check of the rest of his body to make sure everything else was in working order.  
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Tony helped re-calibrate the arm. It was leagues easier to move than when he'd first woken, but it was going to take some physical therapy to get it back in full working order. Helen Cho prescribed some training exercises similar to a person learning to use a prosthetic for the first time and Tony combined that with his own series of measurements and tests to continue monitoring the technical aspects of the arm.  
  
It was far better care than the first time Bucky had received the arm. Hydra pretty much threw him in the deep in of the proverbial pool and expected him to swim.  
  
“It’s important to improve dexterity as well,” Cho told him. “You should take a up a hobby that involves the use of your hands and fingers. Maybe knitting? A lot of people pick it up to improve dexterity.”  
  
Knitting would never fly. Sam would never let him hear the end of it. He’d have to figure out something else to work on his dexterity. Maybe he could start drawing again. He was never great at it like Steve but he could sketch decently once upon a time.  
  
Another, better, idea came to him that night. The team was taking it easy, still recovering from the mission that had turned out a lot crazier than they'd previously thought. Most of them were bearing injuries--bruises and stitches decorating various body parts--with Bucky's being the worst. Darcy suggested a movie night for everyone to take the edge off, with tons of junk food, and no one even had the thought of saying no.  
  
Everyone was filing into the common area, loading up on snacks and preparing drinks, staking out comfy spots with pillows and cushions around the big screen. Bucky watched Clint and Darcy in animated conversation, signing to one another. Clint seemed to be goading the younger girl about something; her reply movements short and sharp, emphasized by ta witch of her brows or tick of her chin.  
  
Bucky wondered for a moment if staring at their conversation would be considered eavesdropping, not that he could even begin to guess what they were saying to one another in the first place. That was when it came to him. He could learn sign language. It would keep his hands working, reinforce Darcy’s grasp of the language--which he remembered her saying was something she struggled with at times--and he would have another way to communicate with her.  
  
That night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Darcy stayed behind to clean up. Bucky lingered in the common area, helping to grab empty beer bottles and discarded popcorn bowls from around the room.  
  
They worked silently as Bucky worked up the courage to make his request to her. He wasn't great at asking for favors for himself. He felt undeserving at times and was still baffled that Darcy was willing to be his friend in the first place. Her friendship, to him, was more than he deserved.  
  
Darcy swiped a lone cheese puff from the coffee table and tossed it into the air, attempting to catch it in her mouth. It bounced of her nose and onto the floor.  
  
Bucky lunged over and plucked it from the carpet, tossing it into the trash bag in her hands. "Smooth move, doll."  
  
She poked out her tongue in reply and giggled. He followed her as she reached for a giant bowl that had once been full of tortilla chips, dumping the crumbs into her bag.  
  
"I was thinking," Bucky started, rubbing the back of his neck, staring pointedly at the floor. "Actually, I was wondering--well," the plates on his arm shifted under his shirtsleeve, responding to the nervousness he felt. "Ya see, Dr. Cho said I need to find a hobby to help with my hand movement," he wiggled his metal fingers in front of him, flexing his palm, trying to appear nonchalant and failing horribly. "I was wondering if maybe you could teach me to sign? I thought maybe it'd..."  
  
Bucky trailed off letting his eyes meander to Darcy’s face. She was very still, he expression unreadable, making him even more uneasy than he already felt. Did she understand what he was trying to ask? Was she angry at him? Was she about to tell him to go away and stop bothering her?  
  
She grabbed her phone from the case clipped to her side and typed a rushed message into the screen, thrusting it at him.  
  
_You want me to teach you sign language?_  
  
The expectation in her eyes, the excited hope on her face, was enough to calm his nerves and make him realize that it was a fucking good idea after all.  
  
"Yeah," he replied, clearing his throat and finding his calm. "I mean, if it's not much trouble."  
  
Bucky wasn't at all prepared when she jumped up and wrapped her arms around his neck, squeezing him tight. He tentatively fit his arms around her in return. In all honesty, he wasn't prepared for a lot of things when it came to Darcy, but he was becoming more and more okay with that.  
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Darcy didn't have a clue how to teach someone a language, let alone one she wasn't completely fluent in yet, but Bucky was a patient student. He was also already multi-lingual, so learning a new language was a skill he was definitely able to master.  
  
They started with the alphabet, with spelling, the way Clint had started teaching her and then she moved onto simple, everyday signs. "Hello" and "Thank You" and "Sup dude?"  
  
It only took a few weeks before Bucky and Darcy were having full on conversations completely in sign language.  
  
Clint sidled up to her one night after a family dinner. "I'm jealous, Darce," he said in reference to her signed conversation with Bucky. She rolled her eyes.  
  
_It's not like I'm the only person you sign with_ , she gestured, referring to the fact that Natasha, aka his soulmate, was also fluent in the language.  
  
_No_ , he signed back, _but we don't have a super secret googly eyed language that you two have_. Darcy flipped him off, checking to make sure Bucky hadn’t been watching their conversation just then.  
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After a month of signing, Dr. Cho cited mass improvement in Bucky's dexterity. The skill was also helpful to him as a member of the Avengers team. Clint and Natasha both were fluent and able to signal him from below while he kept watch from his sniper's nest above during missions. It saved their asses on more than one occasion.  
  
Bucky wanted to repay Darcy in some way and decided that because she missed her last day of safety training due in large part to him being an asshole, he'd take it upon himself to pick up what she’d missed out on.  
  
She didn't get much of a say in the matter. As expected, she grumbled to him via signs every morning he woke her up for laps or had her doing push ups and crunches at the gym.  
  
It's not much of a gift if I hate the gift, Darcy flicked her hands at him in a way that told him just how annoyed she was.  
  
Bucky only chuckled and reply-signed, You'll appreciate it when the time comes.  
  
She flipped him a bird and finished her push-ups. Bucky swallowed down the sharp tinge of fear that suddenly gripped him. He hoped like hell that he was wrong and that the time she would need to use her training would never, never come. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make a squint and you'll miss it Sebastian Stan related easter egg in here. Kudos if you catch it! I also have introduced two ships into this bit that I largely loved and one I haven't written before. Not to say that I don't love *other* ships in MCU...it'll make sense when you get there haha
> 
> Thanks for reading guys and for everyone who left comments on the last bit. I'll be replying soon!

Jane and Darcy were on yet another trip to D.C. As usual it was an endless parade of conferences and lectures about the possibilities of alien life outside of Earth. Ever since Jane became one of the world’s foremost astrophysicists, her opinion was heavily counted upon when it came to policymaking for anything relating to alien beings and otherworld sciences. Darcy didn’t hate it. The political trips meant putting her degree and her passions that didn’t involve Netflix and pizza toppings to good use.

Darcy helped Jane sound less science-y to all the non-science people in the audience. She also enjoyed making conservative curmudgeons squirm in their sanctimonious suits. Some of those old white dudes on Capitol Hill thought they were hot shit because of money and power, but Darcy had faced down Dark Elves and The Destroyer. Crusty senators and sneaky lobbyists were a walk in the park.

Wanda was on Personal Protection Detail with them. She’d volunteered for the task. Normally Natasha or Clint would have come along to watch out for potential trouble surrounding one of the world’s greatest minds, but the pair was currently on extended vacation. Clint had been brief on the details to Darcy, but he emphasized that after the past couple of missions, Natasha definitely needed a break. He mentioned beaches and Mai-Tai’s, though.

Darcy understood that. Bucky had been stressed out more than usual lately. Most of the others didn’t notice it, given that he was growly and taciturn to most people who weren’t her or Steve. Darcy wished she could whisk him away to some remote tropical island, to escape every dark shadow from the past constantly nipping at his heels.

The idea of Bucky wearing some awful patterned board shorts made Darcy smile, absently caressing the Soulwords on her arm, uncharacteristically uncovered for the time being.

“You miss him.” Wanda said, plopping down on the giant hotel bed next to her. They’d booked a nice as hell suite in the downtown area, because Darcy felt like splurging and it was on Tony’s dime anyways. Big fluffy pillows were Darcy’s one travel demand. But Jacuzzi tubs were nice, too.

Darcy’s first instinct was to pull her arm away, to hide the Soulwords—the _name_ —shimmering at her wrist. Instead, she let her arm flop out, words in full view of Wanda. She was tired of hiding. She needed someone to know. She needed someone to know how fucking crazy she was about Bucky.

It was eating her inside, being with him and yet not _being_ with him.  When Bucky wasn’t on a mission, they were always together, enough that Jane put a ban on him being in the lab because she claimed he distracted Darcy from getting actual work done.

They were friends. _Best_ friends. And Darcy didn’t know what to do. Sometimes she wanted to kiss him or hold his hand during movie nights, but that seemed out of bounds. They never brought up the Soulmate thing after that night on the roof, after their major misunderstanding. Darcy had resolved to be patient, to not push, to wait until he was ready. She knew Bucky would always have problems, would always be dealing with PTSD and a laundry list of other issues, but she wondered when Bucky would give her the sign that it was time to take the next step.

Wanda seemed to pick up on all of it, by telekinesis or maybe just really awesome friend intuition. Darcy let out a long, heavy sigh. The only audible way she had of communicating all the angst in her brain.

It was then that Wanda pushed down the bands and bracelets covering her own Soulwords. Darcy blinked in surprise, bringing her face closer to her friend’s wrist. They weren’t words so much as a pattern of code, symbols, and letters. Darcy trailed a finger across Wanda’s wrist, not at all understanding what the unusual Soulmark meant.  
  
“I was unmarked at birth,” Wanda told her. “But so was Pietro. It wasn’t so unusual for children in Sokovia to be born unmarked.” Darcy thought of the superstition of unmarked people and young death. She thought of war torn Sokovia and why so many might be born unmarked. “We had our own bond and after our parents died, we knew we would not waste what short time we had. When we met Von Strucker, we knew our purpose.’ Her features tightened, remembering pain. “Then Ultron happened and Pietro…” her brother’s name still caused her throat to tighten in bitter resentment. “I didn’t notice the mark for days and at first I didn’t want it. I thought maybe my end would come soon. It was what I deserved. Sometimes it was what I wanted.”

Anger and guilt and regret curled between her words. Darcy thought to reach out to her, to offer comfort. Hanging around superheroes she knew that in spite of all their powers, they were just as human as anyone else, and mistakes and self-blame that came with the job. She’d learn that sometimes comfort could sometimes translate as pity, and that just made things worse.

Wanda paused to take a breath, glancing down and running a thumb across her wrist, drawing a mark over the special, secret words there.

“It keeps changing,” her lip twitched, the darkness ebbing from her features as she spoke of her Soulmate. “The more time that passes, the more human he becomes, the language changes.”

Darcy’s head popped up and the light went on in her brain. She tapped her head, signaling that it was cool for Wanda to read her mind. Text was going to be way too slow for the truth bomb Wanda had just dropped on her.

 _Are you saying that_ Vision _is your Soulmate?!!!!!!_ Darcy marked the thought with multiple exclamations in her head.

Wanda’s pale cheeks turned just the lightest of pink, the incline of her head so slight that if Darcy had blinked at that very second she would have missed it. She jumped up, squeaking with glee, grabbing Wanda’s arm and shaking it in excitement.

Wanda started to laugh, but instead her head snapped up, her body alert as fixed her eyes on the hotel room door.

“Shh,” she ordered, ears listening. Darcy froze, also listening for whatever Wanda thought she heard. “Did you hear that? The door crash?”

It was late. Too late for someone to be wandering the hotel halls, but it was possible it was just someone stumbling back to their hotel room after a late night on the town.

“I’ll be right back,” Wanda said, lifting herself from the bed and disappearing out the door. “Keep the door shut.”

Darcy stood too, for lack of anything else to do, her lip clamped between her teeth as she listened and counted the seconds, waiting for Wanda to return and tell her everything was fine.

After ten long minutes, the lock on the hotel door beeped and clicked, Darcy glanced around realizing that if an enemy was on the other side, she didn’t have a weapon. She spun, her eyes flicking from the lamp, to her curling iron on the dresser, to the decorative bowl on the table behind her, considering a possible defense. The door crept open and Darcy’s breath wooshed out of her in relief when she saw Wanda.

“It was nothing,” Wanda shrugged, coming back into the room.

Soon after, both girls shook off the momentary scare as best they could, and decided it was time for lights out.

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Bucky’s arm shot up and he yanked a flying Sam down by the ankle. He almost had him until Sam used the force of Bucky’s pull against him. In a smooth move he was spinning away, Falcon wings twirling in the air. A swift kick knocked Bucky back, clipping him in the jaw.

His teeth snapped together and the force of the kick reverberating through his skull. If he’d been anything less than a super soldier, that blow would have had him spitting out teeth until he was cold in his grave.

Sam landed, wings folding gracefully into the pack on his back. He crossed his arms, bold and proud in his victory. Bucky shook off the kick, working his jaw back and forth trying to work through the pain.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” he grumbled, already feeling his blood throb to the area. A bruise would show up soon.

“It’ll be gone in a couple hours,” Sam chuckled, completely unremorseful at kicking Bucky’s ass. The Falcon was never going to let go that time Bucky had still been in full-on Winter Soldier mode and had torn his wings. Hence the training sessions. While they were beneficial for Sam, Bucky also suspected that their sessions together were in part, a sort of payback.

Bucky glared as per usual and Sam simply chuckled at his scowl, tossing him a towel to wipe away the sweat pouring down his forehead from their two hour training session.

“I’m surprised I could tear you away from your phone for this long,” Sam teased, wiping his brow. “When is the lovely Miss Lewis returning to the compound?”

Bucky had just been about to fetch his phone from his pocket, but withheld due to Sam’s teasing. It had last vibrated that morning, when Darcy texted her flight time to him and expected ETA.

“Go on,” Sam goaded with a grin. “Check it. You’re trying not to check it right now. Just do it.”

“Shut up,” Bucky muttered.

Sam chuckled again. “Man, you’ve got it bad,” he said, shaking his head in amusement.

The door to the gym hissed and slid open, and the two of them turned to see Steve rushing in. Sam’s laughter died and Bucky also picked up on the grimness of Steve’s entrance right away.

“We have a situation.” Steve answered their unspoken question.

“A mission?” Sam asked. Steve shook his head. His eyes fell on Bucky, reluctant to explain and apologetic that he even had to break whatever news he brought.

Bucky’s stomach dropped, preparing himself for the worst. It was Darcy. The situation was Darcy. Something happened with Darcy. He prayed to whatever god might be listening to him that it wasn’t Darcy. He selfishly thought of the billion other terrible things he’d rather Steve tell him than to tell him something that happened to his Darcy.

“In Washington,” Steve began. Bucky’s heart splintered. “The SUV with Wanda, Foster, and Lewis inside on their way to the airport was blown off the road.”

“Are they—“

“I’m not sure,” Steve replied, voice strained. “The hospital won’t give out any news over the phone. We only know something happened because Tony’s pilot alerted us when they were late. They haven’t answered their phones. FRIDAY was able to pull up CCTV footage of the accident.”

“We have to get to Washington,” Bucky managed to ground out through his rage and fear. Whoever had done this would pay. But first he needed to get to Darcy. He needed to know she was safe and alive.

“They won’t let us see any of them unless we’re family or Soulmates,” Sam cautioned.

“Tony’s working on that right now. I don’t know how…” Steve trailed off. “The Quinjet can get us there in an hour. Wheels up as quick as we can get to the launch pad.”

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Bucky had his chance to review the CCTV footage on their trip to the hospital. The engine of the black SUV taking the three women to the airport had exploded while speeding down the freeway—Bucky knew enough about explosions to know that it was cause by a planted bomb, not happenstance. The car swerved back and forth in panic, before hopping the median of the freeway and rolling once, twice, three times into the cars rushing in the opposite direction.

He watched it over and over again, looking for clues, cringing each time the car flipped. Doubt crept into his mind; doubt that anyone could ever survive an accident like that. He’d watch the paramedics put out the fire and pull three limp bodies from the upside down vehicle. The driver’s was automatically covered with a long sheet, dead at the scene. The footage cut out before he caught any sign of Darcy.

“That’s enough,” Sam said, firm but gentle, pulling the StarkPad from Bucky’s grip. The screen was already cracked in the corner from where his metal hand had gripped too hard. Bucky wanted to yank it back and shove Sam away, but he knew he was only torturing himself watching the accident footage over and over again.

It wasn’t telling him anything at the moment. It wasn’t telling him that Darcy was okay.

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY’s lilting voice came from the intercom overhead. “Mr. Stark on the line for you.”

“How’s it going, Cap?” Tony’s voice was right behind the AI’s.

“We’re about twenty minutes out,” Steve answered.

“You’re good to go when you get there. Access to one of the hospital’s landing pads,” Tony told them.

“What about access to Wanda, Foster, and Darcy?”

“Stark Industries just made a very charitable donation,” Tomy said. “It won’t be a problem.”

“How large?” Sam inquired.

“Large enough that they’ll probably let you do surgery if you feel so inclined.”

“Thank you, Tony.” Steve said, sounding truly grateful.

“Yeah well, they’re family…” Tony replied, sounding decidedly uncomfortable. “And…anything for you.” Bucky was too distracted by worry over Darcy to notice Tony’s words, the heavy pause that followed, or the awkward way Steve shifted in his seat as the call disconnected.

Sam didn’t miss it, though. “This isn’t the right time,” he intoned, “but I’m probably gonna be asking about _that_ later.”

Steve cleared his throat and kept his eyes locked ahead. He gripped the wheel of the Quinjet a little harder, dipping closer to the clouds and preparing for their cloaked descent.

A very enthusiastic Chief-of-Medicine, along with the hospital’s PR rep, met them on the hospital landing pad. If the chief was expecting to meet three welcoming and friendly Avengers, he was sorely disappointed. Bucky tore off from the Quinjet, before it completed landing, with Sam running behind him, mumbling about impulsive super soldiers. Steve was obligated to properly land and park their means of transport and therefore, relegated to being the one who dealt with the pleasantries of thanking the staff for bending the rules and allowing admittance. Even if they were doing it with dollar signs in their eyes.

Bucky stopped at the first nurse’s station they passed. “Where is Darcy Lewis?”

The young nurse in turquoise scrubs stammered, trembling under Bucky’s iron stare and growled demand. Thankfully, Sam stepped in to be the calm one. “My name is Sam Wilson, this James Barnes,” Sam gestured to himself and Bucky. “We’re here to check on some friends of ours that were in an accident. Wanda Maximoff, Jane Foster, and Darcy Lewis.”

The nurse faltered a moment more and then typed into the computer in front of her. “Ms. Maximoff is in surgery, Ms. Foster has been admitted to Room 384,” she typed, her face showing disappointment at whatever she read on her screen. “I don’t have record of a Darcy Lewis.”

“You’re sure?” Sam asked. The nurse nodded.

Bucky felt a lump of panic in his throat, Sam’s hand came up to grip his arm. “Thank you,” he said moving them both away from the nurse’s station. “Let’s go check on Foster.”

“Where’s Darcy?” Bucky managed to choke out, hating how helpless he sounded. The possibilities of her whereabouts coming at him like some grotesque flip book. Perhaps she was so badly injured they hadn’t been able to identify her. Perhaps she was in the morgue. Perhaps she never made it to the hospital. Maybe whoever planted the bomb in the car had some how managed to take her for a hostage. She could be anywhere, hurt, alone, afraid and he—

“Barnes,” Sam nudged him as they stepped out of the elevator onto Jane’s assigned floor.

Bucky’s eyes snapped up and far down the hallway, soda from a vending machine in hand, he caught a glimpse of beloved brown curls and an olive jacket. As if she sensed him, Darcy looked up at him as well and before Bucky knew it he was rushing down the hall toward her.

The can in Darcy's hand made a loud clatter against the linoleum when it rolled from her grip. She bolted toward him, a little hobble in her steps, ash on her face and tears in her eyes. 

They crashed together, Bucky completely forgetting that she possibly required delicate handling having just been in a serious accident. He squeezed her tight against his chest, enveloping her in his body, wanting to keep her close and shield her from whoever tried to take her away from him. Darcy held onto him just as tightly, fingers digging into his hoodie, not caring that he still reeked of sweat from the training session that he'd abandoned when Steve came to him with the news. 

After a few moments of feeling her whole and alive in his arms, Bucky found it easier to think more clearly. He pulled back, examining her face. The corner of her glasses were cracked, her clothes a little singed, a few cuts around her face and collarbone had been cleaned. She smelled like sulfur and ash.

Her head dropped back to look up at him, happiness, relief, and worry mixed within her blue eyes.

"How are you not dead?" Bucky asked.

Sam, having appeared just behind him at some point, snorted.

The arch in Darcy's brow reflected that she also found the question rather graceless, but Bucky was still too freaked out to care. Besides, there was a hint of affection in her arched look that said she didn't expect anything less of him.

She disengaged from him and began signing, until Sam cut in. "No offense," he interrupted, looking to Bucky, "but do you mind translating? I'd like to know this story as well." 

Darcy and Bucky rolled their eyes at one another and started again, this time with Bucky translating for Sam. 

Darcy was fine. She was lucky has hell. Aside from cuts and bruises she'd come out clean. No severe head or body trauma. The doctors simply warned her that in the days to come she might experience soreness around her chest and hips, where the seat belt had snapped against her as the car flipped. 

Foster was recovering in the room nearby, where they'd found Darcy on her way back from a vending machine trip. Her injuries were slightly more severe, a broken arm counted among them, but she was awake and patched up.

By the time Steve joined them, Darcy was explained how Wanda had received the worst of it. She'd been in the front seat when the engine blew. Darcy wasn't even completely sure what was going on with her, except that the doctor's were working to stabilize her and sharp glares could only do so much to gain information. Bucky winced when she griped about her inability to verbally communicate, but didn't translate that part to the others.

Steve excused himself to see what more information he could gather on Wanda's situation. Darcy reached forward and grabbed his bicep, holding him back for just a moment. Her eyes flicked to Bucky and there was...guilt? He wasn't sure. The emotion was gone in a flash as she signed to Steve. He looked to Bucky.

"We should contact Vision," Bucky translated, a little surprised. "Let him know about Wanda's condition.”

Confusion stole Steve’s expression but a moment, before he looked back at Darcy and nodded in understanding.

Aside from waiting for word on Wanda, the anxiousness ebbed now that everyone was up to speed. Bucky noticed Darcy swaying a bit, exhausted from the body trauma and the emotional demands of the day. He put an arm around her shoulders.

“Come on, doll,” he said, guiding her in the direction of Jane’s assigned room. He figured there’d be a spare bed to commandeer or at least a chair for her to sit in while they waited. Knowing Darcy, she’d refused to actually get any real rest until they had news on Wanda.

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Darcy was an independent woman. She didn’t need a guy to rescue her. She’d survived that crash on her own—with a little bit of luck, sure, but until the paramedics had shown up, she’d managed to keep herself, Jane, and Wanda conscious, calm, and alive.

She kept it together through the smell of sulfur and the heat from the fire, through the dead body in the driver’s seat. She even maintained calm through the sting of antiseptic and worry over why Wanda’s horrible state and the nurses not telling her where the heck they were taking Jane because no one understood her because she couldn’t _speak_.

She lost it though, the moment she saw Bucky, standing in front of the elevator at the end of the hall. As soon as she locked eyes with him her identity crumbled down to just a lost, scared girl who wanted nothing more than the safe arms of her Soulmate.

Once Bucky was at her side, she didn’t want to let him go, squeezing him tight, trying to bury herself deep enough that nothing could touch her. But she did eventually let go. Her head cleared and he was there and she did her best to chill out and take what silent comfort she could from his presence. Any time he laid a hand on her shoulder or wrapped an arm around her was a blessing and she sighed into each embrace.

After the news came that Wanda was stable and resting, exhaustion finally caught up with her, and Darcy felt like she was going to collapse. Luckily, she was already sitting. Jane had dozed off, knocked out by the painkillers they’d given her for her broken arm. Sam had pulled the curtain around Jane’s bed before leaving the room, to block out the light of the TV that Darcy had mindlessly flipped on in effort to keep herself awake.

She and Bucky had taken over the other vacant bed in the room, sitting hip to hip. No one important seemed to mind. Bucky explained something about Tony and a sizable donation to the hospital causing Darcy to smirk knowingly at the power of money. The next thing she knew, her head was on his shoulder and the TV volume was turned down to nothing more than a gentle murmur.

“You awake, doll?” Bucky must have sensed her shift or a change in her breathing. Any tiny movement could alert the former assassin to her being awake.

Darcy shifted, pulling back just enough to look up into his eyes, his face half shadowed by the darkness of the room, the other half illuminated by the flickering light of the small television attached to the opposite wall. Her cracked glasses were sitting on the tray table next to them, but she was close enough to see his face almost perfectly.

Bucky let out a long sigh, staring back at her, his warm breath ghosting across her face. She wanted so badly to tell him how much she loved him, that as the car had rolled her thoughts had been of him, that life was short, and maybe because of their line of work, theirs would be even shorter and they shouldn’t waste another minute.

But she didn’t get to say any of that. Not because she was mute and incapable of saying what she felt, but mostly because Bucky surged forward at that very second and kissed her.

Bucky captured her mouth and she felt his hand against her cheek, holding her in place, angling her where he wanted her to be. Darcy was stunned enough that she let him direct her, a passive participant in the most passionate kiss of her life. His kiss said everything she was feeling and more. Fear, love, lust…all she could think was _finally_ before her lips and body kicked into gear and she started kissing him back.

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One second Bucky was in heaven, Darcy’s lips against his, her hand fisting in his shirt and then the reality of hell came crashing over him.

What was he doing?  
  
Bucky pulled his mouth from hers, gasping for breath under the intensity of their kissing. He looked at her, cheeks visibly flushed even in the low light, lips plump and swollen. God damn she was the most beautiful thing in the world. And she wasn’t his. No matter how many times that day he’d mistakenly thought of her a his, no matter how complete she made him feel, no matter how much more sense the whole damn crazy world made when she was around.

His eyes flicked down to her wrist, to the band concealing her Soulwords, the words she never talked about. Words that meant she belonged to someone else.

Bucky hopped out of the bed, pretending not to see Darcy’s confused expression, and moved to the door. He paused in the doorway and turned back just halfway, unable to look at her for fear that whatever emotion was displayed on her face would have him crawling right back into the bed beside her just for a chance to hold onto her for as long as he could.

“Get some rest,” he managed to say. “I’ll be back.”

The hallway was quiet, but for a few night nurses moving between rooms. Bucky pressed back against the wall, knocking his head just a little harder than necessary, scrubbing a hand over his face.

What the hell was he doing?

God, he loved Darcy. He loved her so damn much; he couldn’t even breathe for thinking about it. He stared down at his right wrist, watching the veins move under clean, smooth, unmarked skin as he tightened his fist. Why couldn’t it be Darcy? Why did he feel this way about a person if they weren’t meant to be together? Every sappy damn thing he’d ever heard about being with one’s soulmate was the way he felt when he was with Darcy. So why?

“Buck.” His head snapped up and he saw Steve standing a few feet away, his brow pinched in concern. “Everything okay? Is Darcy alright?”

Bucky pushed away from the wall, trying to piece himself together. “Yeah, she’s fine. She’s good.”

Steve looked relieved, but still weary. “Are you okay?”

Bucky frowned, trying to figure out what he wanted to say. “Do you--” he hesitated, trying to figure out what he wanted to say. How much he wanted to reveal. He longed for a time when it was easy to tell Stevie everything on his mind. “Do you ever think that Soulmarks can be wrong?”

Steve blinked, thrown by the question. “Uh,” he said, shoving his hands into his jean pockets. “I mean, uh, I don’t know.” Bucky’s pain expression made Steve try for a better response. “In what way?” Bucky made a few half attempts at clarifying his question, but it was obvious he’d reached his limit, so Steve did his best to figure it out on his own. “Sometimes I think, maybe it’s not Soulmarks that are wrong, but maybe we’re wrong about Soulmarks.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky replied.

“I guess I mean…I haven’t been totally honest with you lately,” Steve said reluctantly. “There’s been some stuff going on with me and I didn’t really want to bring it up, ‘cause you deal with enough and it seems like you and Darcy have this great thing going and I didn’t want to bring you down.”

Bucky had no clue what Steve was talking about. “What’s going on?”

“Look, you know I cared about Peggy, right?” Bucky nodded. “The reason—what I mean is—the reason we took so long to, ya know, get together was because she said my words but I didn’t say hers.”

Bucky couldn’t help the way his eyes went wide at that piece of information. Stevie had been head over heels for Agent Carter from the moment they’d met, at least from Bucky’s point of view. Or at least from what he could remember.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Steve continued. “I thought she was my Soulmate from the moment we met. That’s what made it so easy to talk to her when I couldn’t manage a conversation with any other woman ever before. I wasn’t afraid of being rejected by my Soulmate. Until she finally told me that I didn’t say her words.”

“Christ,” Bucky said in disbelief. “That must have—“

“Been like a grenade to the chest?” Steve gave him a lopsided grin. “Yeah, it was. But she also told me that she loved me. So we had what we had while we had it. We didn’t know it was going to end the way it did. She met another guy after the war…he said her words and she said his and they were happy together. It hurt to hear, but I’m glad she found her Soulmate and had a good life.”

Bucky’s heart clenched, his thoughts going back to Darcy. There was a chance that they could do the same. They could love each other for a time. But Bucky didn’t know if he’d be able to let her go when the time came. He wasn’t sure he could survive watching her run into someone else’s arms and leave him behind to pick up the pieces of himself. Not that Darcy would ever intentionally or spitefully break his heart, but that’s just the only way it would end.

“I’m sorry, Stevie.”

“It’s okay, that’s not even the weirdest part.” Steve cleared his throat. “Someone sort of said my words. Someone here. In this century. I can’t even think about what it means that I’ve been wearing these words since the early 1920s.”

Bucky couldn’t either. If Steve had been carrying around his words for almost a hundred years, to wake up in a new century just to meet his Soulmate, there were levels of philosophy and theories on fate that Bucky doubted he could even begin to grasp.

“I’m glad you found someone,” Bucky offered, a little jealous, and unsure what else there was to say. A painful smile tugged at the corner of Steve’s mouth, suggesting that maybe he wasn’t glad about it. Or was still making up his mind.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, glancing through the window of the door to where Darcy laid in bed. “Peggy was the Soulmate I chose. I don’t know if I can…feel that way about another person. I’m just…”

Honor and duty came first for Steve, as it usually did. The punk wasn’t a huge romantic, but if he pledged himself to one girl, he’d stick by that girl’s side for the rest of his life. Even when they’d been kids, Bucky had a hard time getting Steve to look at anyone who he knew wasn’t his Soulmate.

“Sometimes I feel like there’s someone else out there that could love my real Soulmate better than me,” Steve said after a few thought filled moments. He shook his head, turning to look at Bucky, remembering that when he’d walked up, Bucky hadn’t seemed in the best of moods. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky replied. “You mind keeping watch for a bit…I need to…”

“Sure, get some rest.” Steve clapped his shoulder and moved into the room. Bucky watched him take the chair next to Darcy’s bed and settle in to keep an eye on her and Jane while they slept.

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Darcy awoke from a fitful sleep to the sight of Captain America at her bedside. Steve had pulled over a small table and was sketching in his journal to pass the time, a Styrofoam cup sitting next to him. Damn, what Darcy would do for a cup of coffee at that moment—even crappy hospital cafeteria coffee.

She shifted up and blinked away sleep, grabbing her glasses from the bedside table and slipping them on. She then looked over in Jane’s direction, the curtain still pulled around her.

“She’s still asleep,” Steve explained in a low voice. “We’re still trying to figure out how to get word to Thor.”

Interplanetary communication was a bit of a struggle. Jane had figured out a thing or two, but had yet to share the knowledge. Even Darcy was in the dark as to how the two Soulmates communicated when Thor was off world.

As happy as any girl was to have Captain America at her side to watch over her, Darcy was disappointed that Bucky hadn’t returned. She’d been confused at his reaction to their kiss. Confused, turned-on, overwhelmed…a lot was going on in that head of hers.

She looked over at Steve and signed. _Where’s Bucky_ , her hand formed the letter “B” and curving just under her collarbone and sliding to her bicep. The name-sign that she had given him. Steve wasn’t as versed in ASL as her or Bucky or Clint, but he’d picked up a few things from spending time with all of them.

“He should be back soon,” Steve answered, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Darcy rolled her eyes. Steve was a terrible liar. The clock on the wall showed a three hour time jump from when she’d last looked at it, after Bucky had fled, which meant he’d been gone for three hours. That stung. It wasn’t like she was on her deathbed or anything; she was perfectly fine all things considered. It just sort of ruined the whole romantic fantasy of him being so worried about her that he couldn’t bear to leave her side.

Darcy made the sign for Wanda, another question in her eyes.

“You want to go check on Wanda?” Steve thankfully caught her drift. Darcy nodded. “Sure, let’s go.” He tilted his head toward the door and Darcy slipped off the bed, tugging her shoes back on and following Steve to Wanda’s room in ICU.

The two of them paused outside of the door when they saw Vision on the inside, standing by Wanda’s bed, head bent looking over her still form.

Darcy rapped her fingers on the fake wood and entered with Steve.

“Miss Lewis,” Vision greeted, “It is good to see that you are well. Captain Rogers.” He inclined his head to Steve.

Darcy slowly approached Wanda’s bed. She known Wanda had gotten the worst of it because she’d been in the front seat, but she didn’t expect it to be this bad. One side of her face was scorched, her beautiful hair singed off. A breathing tube had been inserted into her mouth, pulling it down in a grotesque angle. Darcy could see more burns down her neck and across her arms. Her beautiful friend was mottled in angry red and purple.

“I’ve been monitoring the progress of her accelerated healing,” Vision explained in his quiet, wise voice. “It’s not as advanced as yours, Captain Rogers, but she looks much better than she did a few hours ago. Her lung capacity has increased by eight percent since midnight.”

His voice waivered just a bit in the middle and Darcy’s heart clenched. His fingers tapped at the safety bars on the side of the bed. For all his power and knowledge, Darcy could see his helplessness in the face of his injured Soulmate. She remembered feeling the same when Bucky’s arm had nearly been torn off. Thinking of Bucky reminded her of his absence.

Darcy looked up at Vision, pushing a thought out toward him, the way she sometimes did with Wanda. She wasn’t sure if he would be able to hear her, but it was worth a shot.

 _She’ll be really glad you were here_.

Vision’s eyes met hers and the smallest of smiles curved his garnet colored mouth. “I appreciate that Miss Lewis. Thank you.”

Darcy tugged Steve’s arm, signaling that they should go, and headed out.

As soon as they were through the door, a swirl of emotion seized her. Seeing Vision’s grief, seeing Wanda’s condition, Bucky kissing her and leaving her, her own stupid mortality. It was all a little much. Without warning, she ambushed Steve, needing a hug, wrapping her arms around both of his and squeezing his body tight.

Steve made a small noise of surprise but didn’t push her away. He pulled his arms out and adjusted, so he could wrap her up in a return hug. Darcy sighed, contented for the moment. These weren’t quite the arms she craved to have holding her, but Captain America was a pretty damn good hugger.

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Bucky panicked when he returned to find Darcy missing from her room. The nurses had made their morning rounds, so Jane was awake, and explained that she thought she heard Darcy and Steve mention something about going to check on Wanda. He relaxed a bit, and went in search of Wanda’s room to find them.

He’d been away for longer than he meant to be, half crazy with worry that something would happen to her while he was gone, but he needed the space to think. He’d strolled around D.C. for a while, watched the sunrise over the National Mall, locked in his thoughts surrounding Darcy and he’d come to a decision.

Bucky had a lot of opinions about Soulmates, mostly rooted in the fact that he was--and forever would be--unmarked. Life was unfair and given the sins he’d committed, maybe he deserved the punishment. But he would have happiness while he could. If he could have Darcy now—and judging by the way she’d kissed him he reckoned that was definitely in the cards—he’d take what he could get for as long as he could have it. When the time came, when she met her Soulmate, he’d let her go. It would rip him in half, he was sure of it, but the way he figured it was that he was lucky to even have just a little time with her.

A more morose part of him thought that he might even die before he’d even have to face her falling in love with another. But a voice sounding a little like Sam’s and a little like Steve’s told him to shut the hell up with that kind of thinking. No matter how likely the possibility.

He rounded the corner of the hallway to ICU and halted when he noticed Darcy and Steve, locked together in what looked like an incredibly emotional embrace. Darcy’s head was tucked under Steve’s chin, his arms wrapped tight around her shoulders, the two of them just standing there, holding one another.

Bucky took in a shuddering breath, backing away quietly before he could be seen, slowly realizing that he was too late.

It all made sense now. The conversation he’d had with Steve just a few hours before suddenly took on a whole new light.

Darcy was Steve’s real Soulmate. It made so much sense. She was a lot like Peggy; stubborn, smart, brave, beautiful. No wonder Steve was so confused, so reluctant to take a step forward, and Darcy, always keeping her words hidden and secret. It would be dangerous to be Captain America’s Soulmate.

_Sometimes I feel like there’s someone else out there that could love my Soulmate better than me._

God damn Steve and his stupid honor. Bucky had been in the way the entire time. His friendship with Darcy had cut Steve off from even having the chance to get to know her and making things work. He had no doubt in his mind that if he hadn’t been around, Steve would have become friends with Darcy, and his reluctance to fall for her, to love her the way she deserved to be love, would have easily washed away.

Tears pricked his eyes. He both hated and felt relieved that it was Steve. At least it was someone Bucky knew deserved her, who would take care of her and protect just as Bucky would have always done.

He looked down at his unmarked wrist for the thousandth time that morning, once again wishing that his right arm hand been the one he lost, just so he wouldn’t be forced to face his blank skin over and over and over again.

As much as it hurt to realize, he needed to go. Darcy and Steve needed space. Judging by the hug in the hallway, they must have taken a big step forward in their relationship. Of course it would take a near death experience to kick Steve into gear. Bucky would give them time, but also give himself time. Time to learn to live with losing the best thing he’d ever had in his entire damned life.

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It had been three days. They were all home, back at the Avengers facility, and it had been three days since Darcy had seen Bucky. She’d found out from Steve that he’d gone out on a mission. Sam and Tony had tracked down the baddies responsible for the car bombing and had gone off to show them what happened to enemies who dared to threaten people they care about.

Darcy spent a lot of the time trying to keep Jane out of the lab, insisting that she needed rest to heal properly before she went back to work. Thankfully, Thor had finally showed up that day and his presence brought about a significant drop in Jane’s attempts to sneak into her lab.

Wanda was doing much better. Her accelerated healing had resulted in most of her burns being healed and her lungs were back in full working order. Even her hair was growing back to its usual length. But she was despondent, blaming herself for not doing her job to protect Darcy and Jane, questioning herself and her abilities. For the most part, she stayed in her room, only leaving for the daily examinations provided by Dr. Cho.

Darcy noticed that Vision was also frozen out by Wanda’s melancholy. The android sadly roamed the halls, but went about his work and studies as normal. She made sure to give him updates whenever she heard something new about Wanda’s condition.

For the first time in a long time, Darcy was feeling pretty lonely. She’d cuddled up on the couch for a movie night, but even her favorites weren’t doing much to fill her mind and silence her worries about Bucky. He hadn’t answered her text messages and the only reason she knew he wasn’t dead was because Steve gave her updates.

Pulling her arms out of the blanket burrito she’d rolled herself into, she yanked off the ribboned bracelet covering her wrist, staring at her Soulmark. Bucky’s name winked at her as she shifted it back and forth in the light. She traced a finger over the letters, the feeling of abandonment washing over her, and finally let herself cry.

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Steve wandered into the common area, unable to sleep, and found Darcy passed out on the couch. Whatever DVD she was watching had ended and the menu screen was cycling through on repeat. Poor kid had had a rough few days, not to mention Bucky up and taking off. He knew they were best friends, he suspected how Bucky might feel about her, so he couldn’t understand why Bucky would up and leave at such a crucial time.

Maybe it was dangerous, Bucky falling for a girl who would belong to someone else, but Steve had never seen Bucky look as happy as he looked when he was with Darcy. He knew his friend would never be that carefree guy from Brooklyn that Steve had known growing up, but with Darcy there were glimpses of him.

Steve leaned over and reached down to grab the remote from the floor, Darcy’s hand dangling next to it. He noticed her Soulmark shimmer in the light and his breath caught. His heightened senses made Soulmarks clearer to him, in a way that they weren’t normally to the naked human eye, and there he saw it in glittering iridescent gold.

_Bucky or James. Either is fine._

He shot up, scared and thrilled all at once. He recalled when he’d introduced Bucky to Jane and Darcy. Bucky had said her words.

Bucky was Darcy’s Soulmate.

Steve had a feeling that the stupid jerk had no idea. Darcy had always kept her Soulmark hidden and if Bucky had known, he would have said something, he would have been elated, considering he’d lived near a century thinking he’d didn’t have a Soulmate.

Steve grinned. He backed out of the room, leaving Darcy to sleep. Tony had called earlier to tell him that they’d be back the next day. Bucky would be back as well and hopefully Steve could help the two of them confront each other and figure it all out.

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Darcy had fallen asleep on the couch the night before and her back wasn’t thanking her for sleeping in a weird position. She was cranky and tired and still upset over still not hearing from Bucky. After running to her room for a shower and to change her clothes, she headed to the lab, scowling at the sight of Jane’s head bent over some data charts.

She stomped in and began smacking her hand on the table. Jane jumped up and back. Darcy may not have been able to yell anymore, but she found other ways of getting her point across.

“Darcy, I can’t stay in bed forever,” Jane insisted, brushing a stray hair that had slipped from her braid.

Darcy set down her coffee. _One more day,_ Darcy signed. _Just give me one more day and then you can come back to work._

Jane gave her a wry look. “It’s Friday. Tomorrow is the weekend.”

Darcy smiled, but said no more, simply waving her out of the lab. Jane reached for her composition book of notes, but Darcy slammed her hand on top of it before Jane could snatch it.

“Fine!” Jane snapped.

Darcy watched Jane go, realizing that the fishtail braid must have come from Thor. Jane couldn’t braid with two hands let alone one. Darcy smothered a small laugh at the image of the Asgardian delicately braiding the hair of his ladylove. They were so romance novel sometimes it was gross.

“Oh,” Jane remembered, “Rogers was looking for you earlier by the way.”

Darcy nodded and Jane left. He probably just wanted to give her an update on Bucky and for the moment she was too mad to care. She’d find Steve later. For now she had coffee to enjoy and lab assistants to order around.

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Bucky returned to the compound and immediately rushed off to his own quarters for a shower. He wasn’t avoiding potentially running into Steve or Darcy or anything. Although, after three days away, he wasn’t sure what his next move would be. The mission to take down the attackers and deliver them to authorities hadn’t taken nearly as long as he’d hoped.

He needed another mission. Fast. Until then, he’d confine himself to his own room.

That plan would have worked out perfectly fine, if he hadn’t started feeling weird twitches in the circuits of his cybernetic arm. They’d occurred every now and again ever since it had almost been ripped off. Tony would have to take a look at it.

Pulling on a pair of black jeans, a gray undershirt, and his gray hoodie, he took the back way around to Stark’s workshop. It was dangerous. The workshop was just above the lab floor where Darcy worked, but taking the back stairs would provide him a better chance of not running into her.

Bucky jogged up the back stairs and pushed open the door, glancing around the space in search of Tony. AC/DC was playing on the speakers, the volume lower than normal when Tony worked, but it meant that he was around somewhere.

There was a crash and Bucky’s head snapped in the direction of the sound, his eyes landing on the door to a storage closet tucked in the corner of the workshop. Bucky couldn’t hear anything else, but grasped the door and pulled the handle.

The two people, who’d been kissing a moment before, pulled apart and stared.

“Whoa, Tinman! Learn to knock!” Tony snarked, his hands still gripping Steve’s waist.

Bucky looked from Tony to Steve, his best friend’s lips red and swollen from what looked like a pretty heavy make out session before Bucky had interrupted.

“Buck…” Steve began, but Bucky was already backing out of the doorway. Steve disentangled himself from Tony’s grasp and followed. “Bucky, wait!”

Bucky stopped, frustration and anger locking into his shoulders. He rounded to face Steve.

“There are so many out of the closet jokes to be made right now,” Tony said, literally stepping from the closet.

Steve shot a glare in his direction. “Not now,” he ordered. Tony retreated to his worktable, pretending to tinker and Steve turned back to Bucky. “Bucky I—I can explain.”

“How could you do this?” Bucky demanded. “How could you do this to Darcy?”

Steve opened his mouth them clamped it shut. “Wait…what?”

“How could you hurt Darcy like this? All that talk about not being able to love again, but you’re fooling around with Stark!” Bucky’s fist clenched. It was the first time—not counting when he’d been under Hydra mind control orders to kill Steve—that he wanted to punch him.

Steve looked helpless. “Bucky, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Darcy,” Bucky repeated. “I figured it out. She’s the one you were talking about. Your Soulmate.”

“Where did you—no she’s not.”

“Yes she is!”

“Uh no,” Tony interjected. “Lewis isn’t Cap’s Soulmate. I actually have that honor.”

Now it was Bucky’s turn to be confused.

“How’d you get the idea that I’m Darcy’s Soulmate?” Steve asked, utterly perplexed with Bucky’s conclusion.

“I saw you two together,” Bucky replied quietly. “At the hospital. Outside Wanda’s room.”

“Let me hazard a guess,” Tony said, rounding the table and stepping into their conversation. An apple had materialized from somewhere and was now in his hand. Tony took a bite.“You saw Cap and Lewis in some friendly embrace, a little bit of insecurity on your part made it seem like more than it was, and bing bang boom here we are with you avoiding Lewis because you didn’t know she is actually _your_ Soulmate.”

“Tony—“ Steve warned.

Bucky’s face hardened. “What did you say?”

“Tell him,” Tony urged Steve, gesturing to Bucky.

Steve sighed, but a smile was forming on his face. “Darcy has your name on her wrist. I saw it the other night, from when you introduced yourself to her. You said her words.”

“I don’t understand,” Bucky said, unwilling to allow himself to hope.

“Darcy is mute,” Tony reminded him. “Kid can’t talk, she can’t actually _say_ your words, therefore you don’t have a mark.” Iron Man smirked, clearly pleased with himself in a way that only he could be and gave the apple a little toss in his hand. “Come on, it doesn’t take an actual genius to figure that one out.”

Maybe Bucky would punch Tony instead. But the anger he’d been feeling was draining away from him, slowly being replaced by hopeful disbelief. He was someone’s Soulmate. He was Darcy’s Soulmate. _Darcy_ was his soulmate.

“Maybe you should go talk to her?” Tony prompted.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, still dumbfounded. “I guess I should talk to her.”

Tony chuckled. “I’m gonna go make a shake. Anyone want a shake?” Stark winked at Steve, nudging him as he left the room. Steve, for his part, looked decidedly unamused. Bucky wasn’t sure if the redness in his cheeks was from embarrassment or annoyance.

“I can’t believe I thought you and Darcy—“ Bucky said. Boy, had he been an idiot.

“I can’t either,” Steve agreed. “How could you be—“

“It was you and Stark all along,” Bucky smirked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted with a shrug. “I guess for a while I didn’t think it would matter because I didn’t want to go through all that again. But then…I don’t know. It’s _Tony_.” The way Steve said Stark’s name, with a weird sort of disbelief-slash-fear-slash-happiness, was something Bucky was beginning to understand.

“The universe has a strange sense of humor.”

“You’re telling me,” said Bucky. “How long have you two—“

“We’re not. We’re still figuring things out,” Steve’s brows pinched together. “I don’t know if I can…”

“You should try,” Bucky advised. “You care about him and he cares about you. It’s worth a shot, instead of making yourself miserable trying to deny yourself some happiness.”  
  
Steve’s brows shot up. “Oh, you’ve had a Soulmate now for five minutes and suddenly you’re an expert?”

“Damn right,” Bucky grinned. “Punk.”

“Jerk,” Steve returned. “Go get your girl.”

Bucky grinned once more, a genuine smile, without a hint of pain or suffering behind it. The sight of it pulled at Steve’s heart as he watched his friend turn and jog off to go get his Soulmate.

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Darcy was sitting in the lab, sulking over data reports, when wild Winter Soldier burst into the room and stormed toward her. Bucky’s eyes were hard, filled with determination. She hadn’t seen him in days and he…well he looked at little crazy if she was being honest.

Without ceremony he slammed down a piece of paper and a felt tipped pen and said to her “What the hell is your problem?”

Darcy stared at him, doing a pretty good impression of a goldfish, before she got up from the table and walked around to meet him toe-to-toe on the other side. Her hands were a flurry.

 _What is my problem_? She signed, angrily mouthing along the words in a silent shout. _What is your problem? I haven’t heard from you in days and you just—_

Bucky grabbed her hands to stop her tirade and Darcy was a half second away from stomping on his foot. “No,” he explained, “That was the first thing you said to me. After I was a jerk and crushed your phone. You signed to me ‘what the hell is your problem.’” Bucky nodded in the direction of the pen and paper, squeezing her hands still in his grasp between them. “Write it.”

Darcy was frozen.

Bucky’s eyes flicked to her wrist a new band of leather and ribbon concealing her words. “Can I see them?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. His fingers, made of metal, held her wrist, while his other hand deftly untied the binding to reveal her Soulmark.

Darcy heard his sharp intake of breath and the bracelet dropped to the floor. His fingers traced the glimmering mark. “My name.” He let out a small laugh. “I always told Dum Dum that names were cheating.”

Darcy smiled. She remembered Dum Dum telling her about that. Never in a million years did she dream that the man named on her wrist and the man from her granddad’s stories would be the same person.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Bucky asked, almost sounding hurt.

Darcy took back her hand to reply. _Tell you? I thought you knew?_

Bucky shook his head and signed in reply. _I didn’t have a clue, doll. I’ve never had a mark._ He lifted his wrist so she could see _._ No wonder Bucky had never taken the next step. He never knew there was a next step to take. _I thought I was in love with a girl I was eventually gonna loose._ Darcy gasped at his signed confession of love. He continued. _I’ve lived my whole life without words and it’s messed with me and I’ve just now realized I should have known fate would have a damn unfair sense of humor._

Darcy’s lip curved up. _I guess she’s had a pretty good time watching us struggle._

Bucky reached up and cupped her face in his palms, looking deep into her eyes, deep enough to see into her soul. “Even if you weren’t my Soulmate, I wouldn’t care. I love you, Darcy Lewis. I ain’t ever lettin’ you go.”

She bit her lip, trying to hold back the embarrassing, joyful tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Bucky loved her. He was her Soulmate and he loved her.

“So write,” he ordered with a grin. “I’m getting those words tattooed on my damn wrist first thing tomorrow.”

Darcy turned and picked up the pen, placing it to the paper, then stopped. _Are you sure_? She signed. _Those are terrible first words._

She made a face.

Bucky took her hand holding the pen and pressed it to the paper on the table. She drew a single line and then stopped and signed again. _Can’t we think of something else that I said to you first? Something cooler or more romantic?_

“Nope,” he replied. “I want it to be authentic. First words.” Darcy pouted. “Look doll, we can stand here and argue about it or you can hurry up and write the damn words and I can get to the part of this were I get to kiss the hell out of you and maybe do a few other less than respectable things.”

A flush swept through Darcy at his rakish smile. She didn’t need to be told twice. Even if they would affectionately argue about the technicality of her first words to him for years to come. Signing the words with a cheesy heart sketched below, Darcy tossed aside the pen, turned, and leapt up into Bucky’s arms, throwing her arms around his neck and planting her lips on his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I did some research on how name signs are given to people. As a general rule they can only be given by people within the deaf community and read that a lot of name signs use the first letter of a name and combine it will a sign related to a physical or personality attribute. I based Bucky's on the sign for "loyalty" since to me that's Bucky's defining trait. I considered a reference to his arm, but thought that Darcy would know he wouldn't like that very much. 
> 
> -I'm not a member of the deaf community or well versed in ASL, so if you are and have a better suggestion, I'd love to know!
> 
> -I fudged a few details about how hospitals probably work so I could make Darcy a little MIA when Bucky and Sam first arrive at the hospital. Forgive me?
> 
> -I might do a bonus chapter for some smut related Wintershock fun but we'll see what inspiration strikes.
> 
> -I'm also thinking of adding to this series and doing a short one shot for Wanda/Vision and one for Steve/Tony. I have some head canons that developed for this as I was writing.
> 
> Thanks seriously so much to everyone who has read and commented. You're all amazing and beautiful!

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this could be better, but I'm trying to get over my perfectionist ego and post more of the fun shit I write just for fun. 
> 
> p.s. It's hard to write a character who's normally VERY loquacious as a mute. 
> 
> p.p.s. Not beta'ed so any spelling/grammar mistakes, excessive use of commas, or things that don't make sense are entirely my own fault.
> 
> The second part should be up after the weekend. Thanks for reading :D


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